


O Captain, My Captain

by WinterWitchcraft



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Tony Stark, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Hurt Tony Stark, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Oral Sex, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Tony Stark, Porn With Plot, Rescue Missions, Spies & Secret Agents, Steve Rogers Is a Good Bro, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Top Bucky Barnes, winteriron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-01 16:41:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 77,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15147422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterWitchcraft/pseuds/WinterWitchcraft
Summary: After a botched assignment went badly wrong, Captain America -- Bucky Barnes -- died in action in Russia. His body was never found. Thought dead by assassination, Steve Rogers returned to take up the shield.But Tony Stark can't let his failure go. When he learns Bucky might be alive after a daring theft from Stark Industries, he is willing to deploy any skill to bring his captain home.He enters into a deadly mission of espionage that no one may survive.





	1. New York City

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MassiveSpaceWren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MassiveSpaceWren/gifts).



> "It's not going to be okay. This isn't one of your pep talks that erases the past like nothing happened." The words started leaking through too many holes in the dam wall holding back Tony's rage and despair. He tried to curb them and he couldn't. 
> 
> Steve's perfect face and the flattened line of that frown insulted him by merely existing. 
> 
> "You don't get to tell us all how you have a plan, and if we work together, we can repair what the hell HYDRA did by taking down Buck-- Captain America. This isn't one of those clear-cut, magical situations where following a plan drops the bad guys, recovers the soldier, and brings us all home in one piece like nothing happened." Tony shuddered. "Because shit happened. I'm not buying that line anymore, Steve."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Tony… Are you even listening?"

Not at all. In the past fifteen minutes, Tony calculated six opportunities to leave. Their varying degrees of disruption ranged from hooking up with the thin European model loitering by the bar to blasting off through the glass roof sheltering the atrium. Throwing several tons of sheet glass pouring down on his peers appealed to the billionaire. He could probably sway a write-down on the insurance costs and blame it on a crisis of global proportions.

The temptation grew while he plastered on a telltale smirk to conceal growing irritation. He shifted his weight and cast a look out to the crowd, picking out the usual assortment of bored wives on track for replacement with younger version three or four. All he dismissed immediately; nothing worth entertaining there. Not when their husbands counted as shareholders on a few of his lesser projects, and he still needed to meet Hoffman and Fenton about a solar energy project.

Ignoring Steve Rogers came with its own special set of risks on par with crossing the Pacific Ocean in a rowboat or seducing a Russian oligarch's only daughter.

Answering him was significantly worse. A reply entailed a conversation, and a conversation put all the laser focus on the wreckage of a life he desperately sought to ignore.

The gala whirled around them. Dim, intimate lighting washed over the designer dresses and bespoke suits that downplayed wealth until the twenty thousand dollar watch or Cartier jewels caught the eye. He hated this sort of social affair, a chance for the richest men and women in the country to trot out for a photo opportunity and a few digital column inches.

"Wasn't the whole point of coming out here to have a good time?" He straightened his collar. "Instead you're over here with me instead of mingling with them, all the people that paid top dollar to come and see you."

"They're not here for me. That's a load of baloney," Steve said.

"Really? You live like a hermit," Tony said.

"It's called staying out of the spotlight. You might try it sometime, Stark. It might make you happier than you think."

"It's called _hiding_ ," he spat with uncharacteristic acidity. "You bet every last guest here wants the chance to see Steve Rogers back, in the flesh."

"Don't talk like that. This wasn't set up to see me. The foundation does good work and I support their venture helping kids in poverty reach college."

"Then you're fooling yourself. They could have mailed a cheque." Tony barked a bitter, mirthless laugh. "Does anyone even use those anymore? You get the point. Nope, this is all about you, Rogers."

He took an almost vicious glee watching dismay pass over Steve's face, undermining his perpetual composure. The victory came cheap, but he took what he could find. Misery loved company, after all.

"Focus should be on the kids," Steve said. Stubborn as a mule. "If I'd known, I wouldn't have agreed to come. Natasha usually screens these things better. They can't be paying to see me."

"Sure they are. What's a bit of pocket change to see for themselves you're real and back in the saddle? Ten, twenty thousand a plate?" Tony tipped his head. "Twenty, I think. You'd have to ask Pep…"

_Fuck. No_. His thoughts recoiled around the sharp spike of a memory, a redhead smirking at him over her desk. Once his desk. The one he gave her.

For all his gifts as an inventor and mechanic, he had yet to discover a means of temporarily shutting down his brain.

"Hey. You're right, not the place."

Steve reached out for his arm. He shook the well-meant handoff, going so far to straighten his sleeve. At least the touch wasn't long-lived. He didn't intend to provide grist for the social media gossip mills by a very public fight surrounded by his corporate peers and rivals.

Not that it stopped the blond hero who single-handedly stormed Azzano. "Come on. Let's get moving."

"Not a chance. I haven't even suffered the attention of the junior senator." Tony smirked.

He planted his heels in. Not that his reply made a difference. A flex of that powerfully muscled arm and Steve could scruff him like a cub, carrying him wherever he wanted.

Tony wasn't sure he could protest. That merely solidified an inviolate truth: getting laid took top priority. Finding a willing partner of either sex never took long, not when he carried the name Stark and the reputation for a very good time.

Been a long time since he played the field. Months. _Beyond_ months. Not since Buck--

_Fuck. Abort, abort, abort_.

Something must show in his face. His teeth ground together. Whatever bits of a smirk held out collapsed in ashes. His haggard stare swept over the room. Fastest point of exit, probably the swinging door used by the servers as they replenished their trays of canapés like good little drones.

"Tony."

The warning growl alerted him to the moment. He shifted his head to the side. "You really want to do this right now?"

"I'd really rather not do it at all, but you've been avoiding me all night," Steve replied in a tight undertone.

He wasn't wrong.

Last thing he wanted was a lecture from Mr. Perfect himself, the man who could do no wrong. Hell, he could come back from the dead and everyone treated that as the second coming.

That was the problem. Life was all wrong.

Tony checked the slim band on his wrist. Wrong to pray for the Chitauri to make another invasion again. Wrong to hope the Skrull crash-landed a ship in the Philippines or someone wearing a plastic Iron Man helmet held up a bank in Queens.

Painful silence stretched out, cut by the discreet servers inquiring if either guest wished for champagne. Steve declined on principle, and stared at the back of Tony's head until he said, "No thanks."

His gut ached. It wasn't exactly possible to get heartburn from the arc reactor. Discomfort radiated a dull glow through his chest all the same, underscoring anxiety. Friday would be happy to bleat out his vitals at the tap of a finger, but he kept her muted for social events. No need to send Stark Industry stock prices staggering drunkenly over the index.

He hooked his finger in his pant pocket. "What, copping out already, old man?"

"Let's get some air, Stark."  

"It's barely even ten. Party hasn't started yet."

Tony half-turned and had to catch himself before he said something blunt or stumbled, maybe worse. Making a fool of himself in a public place was low on his list of priorities for the evening, well below getting out, getting laid, and getting over the crushing loneliness that drove him to the _Future Foundation_ gala in the first place. 

Steve cut an impressive line in that navy suit. Off-the-rack never did that body of his justice. Beautifully tailored lines of the jacket converged to a button planted over his navel. Tony knew every last dimension and the exact placement. He'd personally had a hand in every element of its creation. The tailor was a formality, something to force the notoriously reticent captain into a proper fitting.

Truth was he needed maybe ten minutes for basic modifications. Friday kept the master template on file and he made a few adjustments. The master for Bucky Barnes. Sure, Steve had an inch in height and different proportions in the shoulders, but he needed something on short notice.

Tony's handiwork was too good. He remembered laughing madly while planting that button scandalously low and telling Bucky after the fact everyone would wonder if the serum enhanced _everything_ to the same degree as his height and taut proportions.

Stop thinking. Quit. Life didn't give Tony an escape or a means to yank the battery out. Memories swelled up. The last months provided plenty of opportunity to practice shoving them at arm's reach, packing them back in the box just like his therapist said not to do.

He shut his eyes. Pretending to breathe in slow cycles approximated being normal. Sooner he left the hotel, the better.

Steve, thankfully, stayed back a few feet. His presence opened a hole in the crowd and a pointed stare deflected a journalist from some website coming any closer.

His lashes were gummed up. Slowly he reopened his eyes, the better to obliterate the illusion of Barnes standing in arm's reach, ready to sprint off at a moment's notice.

It wasn't Bucky. It wasn't going to be Bucky. Bucky was dead or worse than dead, rotting somewhere in a frozen, unmarked grave.

Just seeing the perfect fit up close and personal triggered a wave of nausea.

He stumbled. Steve abruptly cut off a short conversation with a distinguished gentleman discreetly wearing his brigadier general rank on his pocket. Funny how he blew off the American contingent but warmly greeted the one Canadian in the room, giving apologies and promises to reach out at another time.

"Yes, of course," the general said, giving them a screen to make a quick escape.

Tony muttered a platitude that probably meant absolutely nothing. Always could count on a military man to know the fundamentals of a retreat. Something they beat into new officers' heads in West Point or wherever little hatchlings learned to be good little gears in the military bureaucracy.

Where he ended up hauled passed him in a blur. Nothing new about Tony Stark staggering out of a gala or taking a back route for a fast exit. The gossipy crowd knew the billionaire playboy well enough. He used to abscond through bushes and terraces all the time with one, two, sometimes even three beauties on his arms.

Nothing really raised the blood like a dash through parked cars while a helicopter dipped down to meet them. The sort of thing that kept his accountant busy paying off minor fines definitely impressed his bed partners and business partners alike. He commanded power, prestige, and ridiculous amounts of wealth to lavish on others.

Not a speck of that saved the one person he cared most about. It seemed ironic now to be run outside by his only acquaintance who truly didn't care about money or influence.

"Where did you park the car?" Steve asked as they squeezed along a tiled corridor.

"What car? You think I drove?"

The pressure on Tony's throat strangled his words. Whether the collar or an invisible noose, he didn't know.

Humidity peppered by heady spices and immense heat boiled around them. Tony lifted his head and nearly struck a hanging steel shelf littered in overturned mixing bowls. Steve steered him out of the way of an irritated Hispanic man draped in a white apron. A string of apologies in English then Spanish bubbled from his lips. The cook's annoyed face transformed with understanding, and he sent them off with a gentle shooing motion.

The active chaos of the kitchen enveloped them. Tony barely recognized where they went. Certainly he didn't care. Steve could stuff him in a huge iron cauldron and throw the lid on. Bad way to go, but some childish shred of his mind hoped to see Bucky waiting on the other side. If only he believed in any kind of afterlife.

His cheeks hurt. The ludicrous grin stretching his face was a parody, and his stumbling gait better suited for a marionette in a puppet show.

Applying a broad shoulder to another door, Steve pushed them both out into the relative damp chill of a cargo bay. Infinitely better than the stifling pressure-cooker atmosphere in the kitchen. Tony wheezed.

With businesslike motions, Steve shoved him against the wall. His hands lifted instinctively to ward off a blow. None came. His left arm was carelessly batted away. Long fingers stole past his coat.

"I want you to know I haven't got any interest. No matter how pretty you are," he hissed.

His eyes stung. Grinning harder failed to stop tears beading on his lashes. The whole life pro tip off Reddit to clench his buttocks as hard as he could to avoid crying failed too. Mostly he felt his glutes strain against the rough wall.

"Good, because you're not my type," Steve said. He pulled on Tony's collar and sent a button flying, ripping the metal tack right out of a hole.

"Don't like handsome rich men?"

"I don't care for a smart mouth."

"That's just because you haven't enjoyed mine in--"

Steve stepped forward. Tony considered himself a fit and healthy man. He met every metric and health standard for someone ten years younger. Fifteen, on a good day. The blond captain completely dwarfed him, using his bulk and height to overshadow the rest of the forgettable loading dock.

"Drop the act. I'm not blind, Stark. I know you're in pain and you hurt."

"You're looming again," Tony said for all the good it would do.

None, as it turned out. The guy frankly didn't care.

"I also know you haven't seen Doctor Jennings for seven weeks."

"Busted." He gave a ghost of that cock smirk perfected as a teenager. His head rolled back, tipping against the wall. Concrete scratched his scalp, a welcome diversion from the storm blowing through his chest. "You ask her? You know that's breaking patient confidentiality and she can lose her license, right?"

Steve dropped his hands and stepped back. One step opened up a whole world of fresh air. Immediately the inventor sucked in a deep breath, greedy for the taste of old gas fumes and chemicals no amount of power washing blasted off the ground. The loading dock was a servant itself, a dirty little secret of the service industry hidden away from the rich folks.

"We're all worried about you, Tony. Why don't you take up Sam's offer to help?"  
  
"You mean Mr. Captain America in waiting? I don't mix business with pleasure."

A complete lie. He'd slept with coworkers, seduced them. Not that any of it mattered. _Double standards are great in the throes of absolute misery, aren't they?_

Steve bit down hard. The squared corner of his jaw flexed. Bucky used to do nearly the same when keeping a comment shut off. The similarity was so close that Tony clamped his teeth tighter. "Low blow, Tony. I'll let it pass knowing you hurt."

"Can we hurry this intervention along? I've got shit to do," he said. It almost sounded normal, sly and irritably bored.

"I don't ask you talk to me. I ask you talk to someone. This whole thing is eating you alive. Believe me," Steve rubbed his hand over his face. Grief bled into his eyes. A hoarseness roughened up his voice. "I get it. He's my friend too."

Friend. Wingman. Sidekick. Replacement. Hell, name a role Bucky had not filled in Steve's life except his romantic partner. Another time, Tony might have thanked Steve for using the present tense rather than the past. Too many people used the past. He stopped reading news reports and listening to condolences when they tipped into elegies for a dead man.

"How about you worry about the Avengers and I'll worry about me."

"You're an Avenger, if you haven't noticed."

"This your way of telling me to take a walk, Rogers? Trying to get my resignation so you don't have to fire me?"

Tony pushed off the wall. The distance between them vanished. They were chest to chest, and all he needed was a shiner on his left eye to make the portrait of a fight complete.

"No one said that." Fuck Steve and his caring voice, his worried frown, and that damnable line between his brows. Bucky used to say resisting him in Captain Save-a-Friend mode was downright impossible. Tony half-heartedly despised the man and still felt himself drawn in to that promise of hope and everything being all right. "You're one of us. You always will be. The team needs you more than ever, and you need us. Maybe you don't want to admit that. We're here for you, whatever you need, whatever it takes. But you cannot ask your friends to stand by as you waste away beating yourself up for something that isn't your fault."

"It's not going to be okay. This isn't one of your pep talks that erases the past like nothing happened." The words started leaking through too many holes in the dam wall holding back Tony's rage and despair. He tried to curb them and he couldn't. That perfect face and the flattened line of that frown insulted him by merely existing. "You don't get to tell us all how you have a plan, and if we work together, we can repair what the hell HYDRA did by taking down Captain America. This isn't one of those clear-cut, magical situations where following a plan drops the bad guys, recovers the soldier, and brings us all home in one piece like nothing happened. Because _shit happened_. I'm not buying that line anymore, Steve. Maybe if you stood there telling me that a year and a half ago."

Steve weathered the storm. Took it all on the chin, the way the greatest generation always did. Let you punch them in the face, they never even flinched. Not even when they kicked down the doors of Nazi Europe and marched their way straight to Berlin.

"What else did you need to say?"

Tony clenched his fist. One gesture and the armour would cover him, giving him a fighting chance. Words were his great weapon, and Steve demolished his offenses by being so damn pleasant and kind.

Couldn't be an asshole, no. Was it too much to ask that just once, his composure cracked? The way Tony's fell, he had a few moments before he started hair pulling and kicking.

He inhaled deeply. "How about my life and my problems stay private instead of a problem you think you can repair? You have the whole world at your fingertips and last I checked, still plenty of problems out there waiting for some attention."  
  
"You're my friend." Just like that, Steve shot him down.

Tony's eyes widened. He jerked at his collar, pulling it wider. That's the only way he could breathe. "Don't pull that shit on me. Don't you dare."

"Tony. You're grieving for Bucky and you don't let anyone near to share the burden with you. Why do you keep shutting us out?" Steve sounded so reasonable, pricked by the same pain Tony carried every day.

A loss so huge it crushed him when he stopped moving. Steve pinned him down. His pulse fluttered and he squeezed on his fingers. The arc reactor continued to hum, throbbing with bright light under his shirt. It regulated the shrapnel at the same set of cycles per minute it always had, but he felt a burn in his chest.

Panic attack. They first showed up a week after they lost Bucky and he jerked awake in bed, finding the space beside him empty. Nasty fits that took their own time to process. The first two specialists he burned through prescribed little to help but patience and time, two of the few things in short supply for Tony.

"Ever think seeing you keeps tearing the wound open?"

"I have. I thought about leaving. The cost of going -- abandoning you -- was too high." Steve takes another step back, a gift of space when Tony wants to crawl through fire to gouge that suit off his body.

"Great timing, Rogers. Like usual."

"We haven't stopped looking. I haven't lost hope. Don't mistake that for getting over losing Bucky. The hole in the team burns me every day." Steve taps his chest with his fist. "Never was supposed to be in this role again. I hung up my shield for good and I meant it. The world has only one Captain America -- that's Bucky Barnes. I believe it to the bottom of my heart. As soon as we have him back, I'm giving him what's rightly his and taking my retirement."

Tony's fists scraped on the cement. He shut his eyes, tears running hot over his cheeks. "He's gone."

"I don't believe that. I don't think you do either, Stark."

"I was there. You weren't." Tony's voice cracked.

"I know." Steve dropped his hands to his pockets. His chin followed, shoulders hunched. "I regret it every day. You know that? I ask myself what might be different now if I hadn't put down the shield. That was a bullet meant for me, and the wrong man took it. Is that what you want to hear? Because that's the plain and honest truth, and no amount of apologizing changes the past. All I have for you is a chance of a future, one where he's back. Besides, he fit these boots better than I ever did."

That's the other bit part of the equation. Bucky reluctantly picked up the shield when Steve fell. No one asked him to fill in except Steve himself. The Avengers, stripped of their leader, were halfway to falling apart and shutting down permanently.

Nat said it best back then. Let someone else pay the toll. Their watch was over.

Then along came a lawyer bearing the last will and testament of Steven Rogers, asking a word. A sealed envelope changed everything. They all sat there when the attorney read the words. Friday and Sam verified the authenticity of the handwriting. Putting that shield -- the shield his father made -- into Bucky's numb hands proved the best and worst decision Tony ever made.

It was a good year. A year of growth, watching the promise Steve saw in Bucky finally come to pass. No, he wasn't cut from the same cloth as Captain Rogers. Sergeant Barnes brought his own special skills and talents, the kind refined by his long imprisonment in a Soviet hell hole.

Tony wept for the memory of leader. He wept for the friendship he thought he'd never make, much less cherish. He wept for the man who went home with him at night and settled him down. Before Bucky, Tony never thought of monogamy as possible. He and Pepper tried, before they spectacularly flamed out.

Before she turned to dust, along with that chimerical future, before his very eyes.

"You weren't there," Tony repeated himself. How many times he shouted that underwater, in front of a punching bag, at his empathetic psychologist. "You _weren't_ there. He needed you. I couldn't do it, I wasn't enough. If you were there…"

So many ifs. They circled around Steve in his head, a drain of dark imagination. The psychologist gave him a fancy name for the blame game, something about internally reconstructing events with a false narrative. Right now it didn't matter. Logic failed to hold back the flood of tears and the fury finding its target at long last.

Bucky might be alive but for Steve leaving. If he hadn't gone. Hadn't taken that long overdue leave of absence. Hadn't finally had a life.

Tony so badly wanted to hate Steve. Every time he saw the man suited up in navy and white, he wanted to punch something. Blast that uniform right off Steve's back. It wasn't his. He had no right to wear it. They already had a Captain, he was an imposter.

They had a Captain. He followed gladly in pursuit of that round shield developed by his father, and he poured his heart and soul into every mission and debrief. His Captain never asked him to stand at his side. He didn't have to. Tony chose to be there, day after day, and knelt before him night after night.

He had no idea he was speaking aloud until Steve pulled him into a hug, the option of last resort.

Warm arms closed around him and drew Tony in. He tried to shoulder his way out, a rebuff that only prompted Steve to squeeze more. Constrictor snakes were like that with their prey. Twitch and they tightened their coils.

Steve. Good old boy next door. He made a terrible substitute for Bucky. His chin brushed over Tony's lank hair. "I'm sorry, Tony. Saying it won't fix things, you're right. But you know we've got our best people in the field looking and not a day goes by when Maria Hill doesn't turn over another stone or build on another lead. You've got access to the intelligence reports, see for yourself. Between SHIELD and the Avengers and ten national intelligence agencies, we'll find him."  

Tony knew all that. Half the computing power in Avengers Tower went to crunching through data scoured from sources on the light and dark side of the web. He blew through encryption and constructed whole data protocols to snatch a snippet of a call, scrub the background noise, and match anything on file they had for Bucky.

Hell, he even used Peter Parker's algorithms and protocols as a backup. Not that he intended to tell the kid. It would go to his head, no use in blowing up his ego so young.

"Nothing." The sum of all his efforts. Jackshit. "They'll find nothing. There's nothing to find."  
  
Tony swallowed. The burning anger shredded through the panic. Took away any semblance of composure in a wave.

Steve held onto him through the storm, the way Bucky sometimes cradled him against the shades of his own harrowing experiences. Watching friends die. Falling through endless space over New York. Their time serving took its toll.

"We don't stop looking. We don't give up on one another. I swore to be with him til the end--"

_Til the end of the line._

Tony shoved and twisted to escape the hug. He yanked at Steve's arms to break the grip. Anything to get out and get free.

"Yeah, and see where that got us. Haven't you _learned_ yet, you failed. You died and you fucking _failed_ us." He staggered back when the heavy weight of those arms released him. He scrambled away from the loading dock and the too tall, pure blond. "Why do you get to come back from death? Who the hell can't live without you, that they let you pop up from the ice and then a bullet through your heart? But he doesn't. He doesn't have some kind of… of… _magic_."

"It's not magic," Steve said. "They put me in a medical animated suspension. Like the technology Fury used on Coulson, but--"

Tony cut him off, a wave of his hand enough to silence further reply.

"Convenient, isn't it? But you get to live, and Bucky rots somewhere, and that's cool because Captain America is back. At least if you stayed dead, I could mourn you both."

"That's hard, Tony." Steve backed off, turning for the door. "You know what? You sound an awful lot like your father. Things don't go your way and you stop listening. He used to rant like that too."

Howard Stark's ghost may have been the one surefire way to shut Tony up. They rarely talked about him. Never in anger. Sometimes, Tony forgot that Steve knew Howard, not like he knew his father, but as a young man with grandiose ambitions not quite tarnished by age and frustration.

Who else flew Steve to Azzano, and dared try Erskine's harebrained scheme in the first place? That man was nothing like the driven, distant, and cold figure of Tony's childhood. He remembered the man prone to rages and frosty disappointment.

"I'm not my father. Fuck you, Steve." He had nothing else left to say.

Steve turned, headed back to the party. He paused for a moment. "World ain't fair, sure. Stop expecting it will be, Stark. Get out there and do something about it."  

The world flipped. Nausea gripped his stomach and he gulped for air rather than vomit the canapés and water he limited himself to at the gala.

_You sonofabitch. You slippery, sick bastard._

Stars exploded in front of Tony's eyes. He shook from the force of the anger rolling through him. Stooped forward, he planted his hands on his thighs.

When his vision cleared, he howled, "Don't you think I've tried?"

No one was there. He stood alone in the dark. The thin chain around his neck felt like it weighed tons, rather than a couple ounces. The beaten dog tag brushed against the metal rim of the arc reactor. He hadn't removed them except to bathe since the night Bucky died.

Tony clutched the tag. He bled and uttered a hoarse, rolling howl that lasted until his larynx gave out.

Bucky couldn't be dead.

It wasn't fair. The world reaped its toll, he paid the price to fix it. When things went to shit again -- when Steve collapsed under an assassin's bullet -- he reassembled the world again. He poured his blood, sweat, and tears into mending the mess left by aliens and HYDRA infiltrating the government. For all those sleepless nights, Tony asked for nothing but the occasional date with Bucky.

Then overnight with Bucky. He learned to set his status to unavailable except for high priority emergencies.

Then every damn day for the rest of his life with Bucky. All that ended over barren wilderness in the grim triangle where China, Russia, and the Korean peninsula collided. A routine mission gone so terribly, terribly wrong, and not a damn thing diplomatically the Avengers could do without risking a war.

Bucky was dead. Every line of intel, every bit of truth extracted from captured enemy agents confirmed that.

And Steve said he wasn't. Steve, raised by grace of Director Fury playing God. What the hell would Steve know?

What the hell _didn't_ he know? Tony hauled himself up. A dark light lit his eyes. Fine. He intended to scour every last thing again, top to bottom, to shove it back in Steve's face. On the off chance one thing was overlooked, he might find a lead.

Friday chimed in his ear.

"Not now. I've got to get back to the Tower and worked to do."

She ignored him. "Boss, you told me to contact you if there's a problem. There's a big problem."

"What the hell is so import--"

"Military and police are headed to the alpha security lab in Prague. Bomb report. It's on shutdown and I can't get through the security protocols," Friday said.

"What? You _are_ the security protocols in Prague." Tony's head whirled. "Get someone on screen. Call Cho. She knows what she's doing."

"Already tried, boss. Communications are completely down. The lines are severed. I can't get anything in and no one is calling out. I tapped the police radios and lines, no luck." She paused. The length drew out too long for his tastes.

Tony needed nothing like a false lockdown at a facility in the Czech Republic. "What about the nanites? Are they secure?"

"Unconfirmed. I can't tell you if they're in police hands or not."

He pulled out a pair of sunglasses from his inner suit pocket and slid them on. Two twists on his bracelet sent a stream of golden mechanical particles crawling over his forearm, forging a thin flexible red net. The plates fit together seamlessly. In a few moments, they were crawling halfway to his elbow.

His suit was based on the same nanite technology under Helen Cho's program in Prague. Not something he could afford falling into the wrong hands. Bucky had to wait another hour.

He swore a prayer to the ghost of his lost lover. _Wait for me. Please. I'm coming_.

With a blaze of rocket fire, he blazed a path into the night sky, arcing east over the Atlantic.

 


	2. Prague

Dawn rushed over the medieval church spires and terra cotta red roof of Prague Castle. Tony raced to meet the breaking of a new morning, his blood red armour still reflecting the inkstain shadows of the passing night. Below him, streetlights glowed, egg-yolk pearls strung along narrow streets hugging the banks of the Vltava River that wound in sinuous bends through the northern suburbs.

He triangulated on the modest, multistory office block housing the alpha laboratory, site of intense nanotech research led by Helen Cho. He chose the building for its proximity to the Czech University of Life Sciences and distance from the nascent tech hub. Too likely to attract attention among the up and coming companies, the lab needed privacy and a hell of a power source. He had little reason to regret the decision until now.

Friday streamed a constant data feed across his visor, and he listened to the military EOD team coordinating with the Prague police. Traffic snaked away from the leafy suburban neighbourhood, channeled by roadblocks. Heat signatures bloomed in front of him, revealing the snipers and their spotters hidden among narrow houses and an empty parking lot.

The lack of movement around the office block disturbed him most. Even accounting for the early morning, he expected to see a few vehicles and some hint of activity. Scientists kept odd hours. Instead, he watched a tightening inner perimeter close on the doors, led by bomb-sniffing dogs and their handlers, and a sea of police.

 _Great. Any closer and they'll blow themselves to kingdom come_. He descended through the thin cloud, cutting the flares from his boots.  
"Patch me onto the police chief's cell phone. Link up the bomb squad down there, if you can." He tapped his helmet to avoid projecting his voice.

"Got it, boss. This won't be an encrypted feed." Friday's warning accompanied the slew of data rolling down his visor.

Now or never. "Friday, how do I say good morning in Czech?"

" _Dobré ranó._ " The AI adjusted two projections on his screen. "Two drones are circling the rooftop. Rooftop landing not advised. I'm running secondary algorithms searching for any digital transmissions on regional hubs."

"Keep it up. I want eyes and ears on the lab."  
"Understood. So far I haven't been able to acquire access to the alpha lab. Still running diagnostics." She paused. "You're up."

A melodic chime resonated from below. The steely-haired man, about fifty, coordinating the project dropped his gloved hand to his belt. Another pair of men froze, snatching up their government-issue phones.

Tony pressed his arms close as he dropped from the sky, slowing his descent to a stately glide. A drone blipped its red light and peeled off to close in. His better judgment halted him from waving at the glassy camera.

" _Dobré ranó,_ Prague _._ I'm dropping by for a spot inspection of my lab. What seems to be the trouble?"  
Czech profanity from the police chief lit up in his ear, dutifully translated. After a solid thirty seconds of invective, the Czech man reverted into English. "This is an active scene. You can't be beyond the cordon."

"Disregarding the fact I obviously am," Tony eased into the plain, cold truth with a scalpel edge, "I'd like to advise you to pull your men back. What are we dealing with here?"

"I think not."

"How about you get someone bringing up the licenses and records for the building. I'll spare you some of the work. Doctor Helen Cho runs the company, and that belongs to a conglomerate majority funded by Stark Technologies. You'll find that's me, by the way."

Not a whisper of activity ghosted in front of the bland outward-facing windows, but he wasn't surprised. They served for show only. Interns manned cubicles doing busy work, while the real research took place deep in the reinforced core of the building and the underground laboratories.

After snapping orders over his radio to confirm Tony's statement, the police officer returned to his phone. He gestured at the EOD team, who waited like a pack of hunting dogs scenting a fox.

"Regardless of your identity, this is a matter of national security."

"Heard you loud and clear. Loose bomb inside, found by a cleaner on the night shift round, right?" Tony swivelled in front of the building, floating between the doors and the men on the ground. They pointed at him, some training their guns.

The chief's impressive moustache twitched but he maintained a veneer of calm. "How did you--"

"My building, my security systems, my responsibility. I'll save you all the trouble and take care of it."

"No. We have a team ready to go. The sooner they enter, we can secure the site. Until then, you can wait behind the cordon."

Tony's patience, already teased to the point of transparency, snapped at the bullish attitude. He had no patience for bureaucrats and law enforcement, their red tape forever a source of misery. Whatever magic Steve knew how to work to get their compliance didn't rub off on the nanotech armour. "Don't like your people very much?"

"I beg your pardon?" On the ground, the chief gripped the phone and glared at him.

"I guarantee you go in, your team will find explosions and it won't be your potential bomb or whatever this kid thinks he saw." Tony hovered twenty feet off the ground, his hands lowered at his sides. The repulsors were dark, as close as he could get in state of the art armour to peaceful intentions. "Listen up, chief. The security in the building repels physical attacks as well as technical threats. They're live. That bomb may not be. Someone inside put the building on lockdown."

Damning silence drifted over the line. He switched the uplink on mute. The older man squared his shoulders and snarled at a subordinate.

Tony shifted focus. "Friday, you got anything for me yet?"

"No luck on overriding the security system."

"What, you forget to reset your password? Check your spam filter."

"I'm being actively resisted, boss. Unable to confirm whether access through the sewer systems is a possibility." Friday projected a blueprint in pale definition across the visor. He frowned at the hazy lines drawn around the subbasement.

Active resistance? Not a single person on staff, all are fully vetted, had the skills to thwart his personal design. The outside world had no reason to target the lab unless they knew its contents.

His night took a nosedive.

He flicked the mute off. "You decide on the smarter course of action? They're not my people."

"After deactivating the security systems, you will allow my men through." It wasn't a question. "As a professional courtesy."

"Nope, not in the cards. I've got sensitive materials and data here, not anything I'm willing to lose to a camera phone or a hack job." He glanced at the dark front doors. Tinted film reflected a casual look, but he couldn't register any heat signatures. No one down running for the exit, then. "I'll hand over the bomb as soon as I dismantle the wires."

"I strenuously object. You're not trained to dismantle an active bomb," the chief said.

He swiveled around, the pulsating arc reactor flashing with blue starfire in the dim morning light. "Excuse me?" He tapped the reinforced rim. "Speaking as the guy with the palladium-based energy source in the middle of his chest, I think I'm probably the most competent person here to deal with this. Neither was I giving you the option." Swinging his arm wide, he drew an arc from the EOD team to the building. "Plan is pretty simple, I go in there. You stay out here. If Helen Cho gets in touch, you call me."

"I don't even have your number," the older man spluttered.

"Got it, boss!" called one of the EOD squad, waving his phone.

"See, all handled." He muted the uplink again and hissed under his breath. "Tell me you got a way in."

He barely heard the police chief snapping into the phone, watching the voice transcription of his complaints. Legal threats, prosecution, disparaging his American attitude spun by. Tony rolled his eyes.  
"Conventional approach only. I think you'll like this." Friday's interface gleamed and a burst of package activity assembled into a crackling snip of audio.

_"...trapped in the lab. Our access privileges are… denied. I-- tried to-- restore from backup. Sent Josef to IT ten... and no response yet. It looks like a glitch in the system. Lab is safely quarantined. We're standing by to…."_

Helen Cho's cultured voice flowed over the recording, pinched by worry under her usual reserve. The line quality was terrible. He noted the timestamp, two hours before.  
"Source?"  
"Encrypted feed picked up through a Stockholm data warehouse. Destination would be--"

"SHIELD. Why the hell did she call SHIELD first and not me?" He actually frowned at the litany of error codes and strings processing in a menu under the soundwaves. Password failures, misroutes, and system bugs scrolled past, too fast for him to immediately parse. Time. He needed time, something the Czech forces were not inclined to give.

"Are you even listening?" English bled over the line as the chief was restored immediately.

"Loud and clear. You want to talk about jurisdiction, take it up with the ambassador. Look sharp, gents, I'm going in." Tony dropped to the ground and made it fifteen feet away before the suit's warning systems lit up.

"Side entrances are rigged to blow," Friday said.

So much for the discreet entrance. "Tell me about Cho. What was she doing when this went down?"

"Running weekly reporting on the latest _Asclepius_ batch by the looks of it."

The lab focused on using nanites for medical applications. Her choice of name, not his. His jaw tightened as he left behind the befuddled EOD team and the irate chief. "Patch me into the control panel. Let's see what mess was left behind for Daddy."

He marched up to the front doors and swung his hand in a sharp gesture, bringing up the projected interface. Complex halos interlocked around nest dials of code appeared on his visor, invisible to others. They stared at him conducting an invisible orchestra. Someone guffawed. He pushed their presence to the back of his mind.

Data streamed through the link while he transmitted the key, configuring a series of holographic dials with his splayed fingers. The internal controls flashed for a moment.

Then fifty thousand volts ripped out of the diodes buried in the concrete and nailed him in the chest, blowing him back off his feet.

His teeth rattled and his body went rigid. The armour absorbed the electricity it couldn't redirect, throwing sparks. Fuzzy displays blinked and stabilized.

The masculine howl in his ears wasn't his own. Goosebumps broke out on his arms at that gagged, guttural shriek. Tony gasped for breath like someone punched him in the stomach.

 _Shit, shit, shit_. A memory. His body refused to hear the logical side of his brain telling it he was fine. He remembered the video of Bucky strapped down, screaming as Hydra electrocuted him. It wasn't real.

_Bucky is gone. Dead men don't feel pain. Get a grip, Stark._

So much easier said than done. Physical security engaged in the building. He saw specks light up on his visor.

Tony kicked on the afterburners to arrest his momentum, twisting in midair. Straightening up, he stormed past the jogging line of soldiers. Their discipline held, but a strategic retreat overruled the police chief shouting at them to enter.

"Yeah, this really isn't cool. Who the hell are you, taking over my toys?" Tony set his jaw and tore up the face of the building, landing on the roof in a crouch. He felt the grinding metal under the plates, and the deepening lockdown dropped metal grates over the windows.

He tugged aside a hollow air compressor mounted on the roof, part of the upgraded HVAC system. Underneath he found a portal winched shut, and he placed his metallic gloves flat. "Friday, calculate the force I need to open this?"  
"Boss, no!"

His fingers were already wrenched into the practically seamless rim, magnetic locking mechanisms activated to give him any grip. Her harrower cry froze him in his tracks, the hair on the nape of his neck lifting.

The last time she screamed like that, he watched his beloved disappear. His body shook as sky exploded with shrapnel and he lost his heart in an instant.

"It's rigged to blow," she said. Marks peppered his vision, whole streams of red dots knotted on meandering lines. "Conventional explosives and remote detonators. I can't force my way into all of them. Multiple feeds, multiple taps."  
His hands gleamed gold and red in front of him. A slow breath stole into his mask. Rare earth magnets disengaged.

How the hell had someone compromised the building without him knowing? More importantly, the list of possible suspects were vanishingly few.

"You pull that open, the building goes, you go."

"Fine, plan C." He dove off the rooftop at a dash, inverting in flight. A quick sweep left him floating in front of a blank wall that should link up to the men's room. "We _make_ a door."

He raised up the interface again, and started to work.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, the outer security protocol finally broke for a twelve second window. Tony couldn't wipe the sweat from his face. He leveled the laser diodes on his forearm and cut open a hole in the wall. Sheetrock and plaster rained to the ground. Hurling himself through bashed down the exterior wall and sent him skidding over the tiles.

Behind him a nearly invisible web rippled into place as the external sensors came back online. He lay in the dust, watching the nanobots crawl together and repair the scratches on the glistening red paint.

"I'm in. Get word to the police chief to back off until I'm done."  
"No can do. External comms are scrambled." Friday, the ever faithful AI assistant, had the decency to sound a little perturbed. "Active net over the building. It's kind of impressive."  
"Don't let those words come out of your mouth ever again. Even if it is my system." Tony had his doubts the security protocols were his work, though they held all the technological benchmarks of his initial parameters. He worked open the door to the washroom and stepped into an empty corridor.

Investigating the old fashioned way took time, too much of it. He crept from door to locked door. Dormant badge readers and physical locks weren't a whole lot of good against the laser applied to the deadbolts.

Disused offices greeted him, some filled by a few dark workstations and others still wrapped in the odorous plastic smell of fresh paint and furniture. Clearing the second floor, he swept the stairwell under the ominous blood sheen of an exit sign.

Friday's schematics provided him the direction to the server room. A knocked over bucket lay on the linoleum. Several broken ceiling tiles exposed a river of wires. Tony scowled at the door, several scratches and dents evidence of a failed attempt to force the lock.

Hell, Steve in a bad mood might have trouble getting through.

He pressed his palm to the data pad. Nothing lit up. "So much for the easy way."  
The magnets in his gloves grew in strength and density. Nanobots matrixed together generated a minor gravitational disruption on their own, fed by the spinning of the reactor. He ground his teeth, setting his palms to the door. If this failed, it was going to fail spectacularly.

He planted his boots and heaved. "Fifty percent power."

Friday fed the energy from the reactor through the suit and he shuddered at the kinetic charge building up. Hinges inside creaked and wailed. The steel portal bent outward in a ragged crease. He kept pulling, the thrusters kicking on, as an unholy wail shrieked through the corridor.

The door buckled. He lurched back, gouging a deep furrow in the floor while the metal screeched. It landed with a clang, revealing the server room beyond. Tangled wires, formerly arranged in neat columns, poured out of the equipment and dangled from the ceiling. He spotted the bomb in the heart of the nest. An olive green, finned lozenge much bigger than the football it resembled sprouted blue and black cables from every direction.

"Great. Get this over, back in Manhattan by lunch, and I can get on with my life." That was the plan. It never turned out that way.

"That's a Russian missile." Friday was preaching to the choir to the man whose father fueled half the military-industrial complex in the US and the Western world.

He knew better than to approach, visually measuring the device. "AT-3. I haven't seen one of those in a while. What's it doing here?"

The wires held. He couldn't see a detonator or a timer device, not that he doubted one existed somewhere. Options stood between him: deactivate the device, check the laboratory or find his staff.

Tony squared up his shoulders and headed out of the server room. The arc glow of the reactor dimly illuminated the corridor and he forced his way through the locked fire doors as he approached the alpha lab.

Any hopes of a prank or peaceful restraint died the moment he stepped out into the landing. Beyond the biometrically sealed doors, he spotted the first body in a white labcoat in a heap on the floor. The blast-proof walls would withstand him trying to punch or cut his way through. He settled in to hack his way through the security protocols, Friday at his back.

Their efforts left him sweating and furious. By the time he pushed through, his boots crunched on broken glass and overturned bottles. Doctor Cho prided herself on a well-run, pristine lab. Destruction greeted him in the shadowy room. The dark monitors stared over empty desks. He turned away, measuring  the cracks cobwebbed on the thick glass partition walls. Containment pods for the _Asclepius_ nanotech hung empty, their cooling liquid poured out in still puddles. Two bodies lay face down, mercifully, in the coagulated muck.

"Anything?" An unnecessary question he already knew the answer to.

"No life forms or artificial bots showing up on the scans," Friday said.

"The panic room?"  
She chimed in the negative. "My range is limited."  
He crunched past the bodies and pushed on to the reinforced cube at the heart of the building. Bucky was the one Avenger, aside from Nat, who never scoffed at him building in panic rooms into all his labs. They understood without words -- a Russian thing, probably.

Blood joined the cooling fluid. He discovered a man no older than twenty-five a few feet from the door. No trace of his fingertips remained, the skin eaten back to the bone. Ruined matter leaked out of his staring eye sockets. The surgical precision destroying his eyes and fingers left Tony physically ill, gripping a desk for support. The rest of the young man looked perfectly fine.

His badge was gone, the line hanging from his pressed shirt.

"Friday, tell me I'm not crazy." Without anyone else at his back, he needed someone to talk to. Some human lifeline.

"Josef Svoboda." A name granted to an empty, ruined face. Tony brushed his fingers down over the wrecked eyes, closing them into a facsimile of sleep. Friday went on, "Twenty-four. Senior systems administrator. Graduate of the Technical University of Munich. Unmarried, promoted this February."

The story of a life cut short echoed in his ears. He bowed his head, swallowing darkening anger. He didn't know Josef from a hole in the wall, even though he indirectly paid the kid's cheques. The lab was supposed to be safe, a place for bright minds to pursue their dreams in an incubator for innovation and brilliance. Not die, partly devoured by their own making.

"Notice everything that would've opened the door is missing?"

"A calculated attack. By who?" Friday's question mirrored his own.

Tony shook his head, laying his hand against the panic room interface. Forcing the system awake by brute force left a strain on him. He had to fuel the energy from the arc reactor, and though it had gobs of power, his body ached. So much for a light lunch at his favourite restaurant, where he and Bucky spent hours basking in one another's presence behind the relative privacy of discreet waiters.

Sometimes he imagined the tall soldier might breeze in at any moment, dropping into the seat beside him.

Whirling figures raced across his visor, and he punched code after code into the complex apps fighting his own security measures. Code chipped away at the corrupted defenses. Again and again Friday, guided by him, led the attacks in the cyber realm, unseen and barely felt.

The comm shield fell, descrambling the digital output. All at once calls poured in. He directed one through, the EOD team leader barking, "What the hell do you got in there?"

"Live Sagger rigged to the server room wires. Bring the power up and she'll blow. Cut the wrong wires, she'll blow." Tony cut to the chase. He kept up the pressure. Having a laptop would have helped, but when the lockdown on comms fell, Friday immediately drew on the computing power of databanks scattered over Europe. He made faster progress, his programs spooling up with the massive jump at their disposal. Calculating faster, reacting better.

"Shit," the Czech said. "I can get a few men in there to remove it."

"Don't. The building is fully rigged to blow."

 _Access granted_. A blue cursor flashed on his visor. Tony felt the perspiration running down his back. Victory, if a small one. He punched four codes in. The panic room door slid back.

Neat cots and a sofa faced him. No one stood inside, eating breakfast from a tin or nose-deep in a book. The place smelled faintly like antiseptic cleaners and recycled air. He startled at a low thrum in his gut.

Whomever did this was going to pay.

"Sir, the back wall -- gave out--" The man's voice disappeared under a howling din relayed over the cell phone.

Tony spun and threw his arms in front of himself. The backdraft of brilliant light flung him into the panic room, heat and fury bursting around him. He smashed into a neat metal rack laden with food and potable water.

He couldn't see. Everything burned molten gold. Once he kissed Captain America over the ocean and everything blazed so pure, even with his eyes shut. Even the silhouette of his love turned to fire. The moment reminded him of that lost afternoon.

Explosions brought down the roof and walls, the office block shuddering like a wounded beast.

"Bucky!"

His scream melded with the violent glow.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	3. Transatlantic

He had never been happier to see daylight. Chunks of stone and the heavy metal spars shifted off his pinned body. Tony inhaled in a sharp wheeze, unable to stifle the agonized response entirely.

Blood trickled down his face from the split welt on his forehead. One hell of a shiner must have formed while he was out. Little sensation remained in his left leg where the broad steel beam lay too long across his shin. He weakly tried to raise his hand. Dust clung to his armour and infiltrated the intake valves.

"Don't move. We got this." Two phrases signalled the arrival of his avenging angel.

Tony slumped back against the debris mounded up under him. The dark silhouette vanished out of his blurry sight, but he took comfort. He knew the sleek outline backlit against bright sunshine anywhere.

Bucky came for him. With Cap coordinating the rescue efforts, he rested easy, or as easily as one could under the collapsed building.

"You know how you always told me to take it easy?" he said. His gloved hand landed weakly on the mound of loose rubble. "I decided on a working holiday."

"Look where that got you. Most people book holidays in Florida, you know?"

Debris puddled around him, dust rising to catch the rich golden light, and he stared in dazzled wonder at the motes suspended in a shaft of sunlight. A chunk of stone shifted off his shoulder, leaving him propped awkwardly. Spasms along his battered back muscles left him groaning.

He hated admitting his weakness and cursed.

The chain around his neck licked at the collection of patchwork bruises forming under his armour. He flexed his shoulders as much as he dared. Dust in his face and a pain in his shoulder didn't matter. He needed to know the dog tags still lay on his chest, his protective talisman. The tags were only thing he wore on a daily basis that connected him to the man he loved. Their familiar weight scratched his skin under his shirt.

A sigh ran through him and he slumped back.

 _I'll always be with you_. They were sweet nothings, a romantic whisper in the night.

How bittersweet the promise was after that dreadful night, wreathed in smoke and snow, rocket fire lighting up the air. Tony clenched his eyes shut. He couldn't think about that while weak and sore. The important thing was the promise. Bucky promised and kept it, even when he hadn't been able to live up to his word.

Everything would be okay.  

Within a few heartbeats, Captain America filled his frame of vision. His gloved hand landed on Tony's damaged pauldron. "No, that's good. Stay with me, Stark."

"Don't make me act weak and mortal for the crowd. I can't take off the mask. Have to keep the legend of my invulnerability alive," he said. A mutter trailed off in another tight pang of pain. Maybe things were worse than he originally thought.

Another chunk of metal shifted from him. He felt strong arms wrap around him, accommodating for his armour's cumbersome bulk and weight. Inch by inch, Captain America hoisted him from the ground. His breath fluttered and seized in a fugue of agony, painting a stuttering track on that beloved shoulder where so often he rested his head.

He cried out, muffled against the dense spun fabric of the navy uniform.

"Don't hold it in." Calm, supportive words. "Pain is how you know you're alive." Bucky stared off at the crater.

Tony let the dark tidal wave carry him under.

* * *

Every inch of Tony's body throbbed in dull protest of its mistreatment. A needle the size of a baster plunged into his arm, pressing up against the nerve, the metal a burn he couldn't scratch or dislodge. His fuzzy tongue pressed to his palate, unpeeled with effort.

"Buck?" Even forming the name hurt along with a litany for his sins. He squinted against the glare of unkind incandescent lights and the dull green curtains common to hospitals everywhere. Sitting up became his first priority, yanking off the tape holding down the IV needle his second.

The third, clutching the dog tags still around his neck. Incipient panic eased a fraction. Breathe, he forced himself to inhale.

Machines beeped and squalled to announce his return to the world, initiating a healthy bustle of activity. Nurses soft-shoed their way around the corridor. He glanced at his wrist, comforted to see the metal band securely in place. The hidden nanotech remained at his beck and call, a good thing considering he planned to jet out of the private room as fast as he could.

The curtains hissed when pulled aside. Tony negotiated kicking off the tucked white sheets and blankets, not about to stop for Nurse Ratched.

Instead he found himself face to face with an unamused redhead in flattering grey trousers and a white blouse, glaring him down. Few people checked him in any fashion. Despite being far under six feet, the former ballerina managed that task. He froze. Natasha Romanova rested one slim hand on the footboard, as much a message as she cared to telegraph.

"Afternoon, Stark. Welcome to the world of the living."  
He couldn't fathom what she was doing there. "How long? I miss out on a mission debrief?"  
"Nine hours," she said.

"Where's Cap?" The flat longing threatened to breach through his careful reserve. Even alone, he kept a tight lid on his feelings, but pointless around someone like her. Her fiery brows rose a fraction.  
Natasha ghosted over to the bank of machines and punched in a few codes, pulling on a wire or two. The squalls ceased, leaving the murmur of a fan in its wake. They both directed furtive glances to the door, and she retreated to take care of any nurses dashing in to see to their illustrious patient. Tony scowled at the medical equipment. Most of it looked straight out of 1988.

"Waiting for you in Munich." She composed herself before answering him. "Want to tell me what you found down there?"  
"AT-3 rigged to the server room power supply. I was looking for Doctor Cho when…" Tony trailed off. His eyes widened and then sharply narrowed. The bile threatened to overflow into his throat and he grabbed the side-rail of the hospital bed. "No. That was…"

Sympathy softened her face. She looked away to the wire-framed window that framed the unimpressive view of a dingy courtyard. The best money could buy. All the more reason for him to get out of bed and back to work.

Nothing here was American. He placed his surroundings from the tech, the glimpse of a diminutive cargo van barely big enough for the three boxes stuffed into the back. Prague. Still in Prague. No Bucky.

"Who pulled me out, Nat?"

The shape of those lips put the death knell of hope through him, hammering nails into a coffin in his heart. "Steve."

His shoulders dropped, stilling him, sitting there in a tangle of wires. The thick plastic and vinyl heart monitor secured to his finger dangled over the edge after he threw it aside. Blood welled out of a small puncture hole when he tore the IV out. He wouldn't let her see the despair or self-condemnation. Of course Bucky wouldn't be here. Her answer jarred him back to the present, one where Steve received the idolization of the masses and his predecessor received quiet tributes and memorials.

It was all wrong. But Tony couldn't raise the dead like Nick Fury apparently did. He at least needed a body for a miracle. He plastered his trademark smirk on, knowing full well she saw through his sham and let him carry on the pretense. In some ways, Natasha was the best assistant he never had, the closest friend he imagined.

"Great. Thanks for watching over me. Take care of the paperwork? I'm checking out."  
"Don't you want to know about the building? Before you sign off on the repairs," she said.

She knew the value of silence. In his dark times, only Natasha reliably kept her mouth shut and avoided the questions he was unprepared to confront. Some wars required taking cover rather than exposing yourself to violent ends. He tore off the ugly green hospital gown, fighting to pull at the knotted ties in the back. His fingers fumbled over the rough cloth, replaced by her nimble touches that left him bare to the waist in no time at all. Fresh clothes lay in a cubby, further proof of her forethought. Nat forgot nothing, and he made a mental note to buy her something nice. Maybe a special silencer or depth-charge stilettos.

Tony pulled on a fresh long-sleeved shirt. The loose pants and bandages covering his legs would suffice. No, he wanted nothing more than retreating into his secured office at the Avengers Tower to dig into the doomsday scenario where someone broke through his security and robbed him. Hellfire and brimstone sounded about right.

"Give it to me, then. Briefly." He worked his foot into a fresh pair of sneakers. Natasha again. He seriously owed her a bonus. Like she worked for him. That too had been a long time ago.

"Five dead, four missing including Helen Cho. The explosion destroyed most of the building. Fire consumed most of the lab. Some equipment may be salvageable." She delivered the news in precise, neutral terms, equal to any broadcaster. "Minor property damage to neighbouring structures. Bomb experts are analyzing the residue and trying to compare for an AT-3. The EOD team made reports of multiple explosions."

More than one bomb rigged up in the alpha lab suggested more than an irate employee. Something past sabotage. Tony's guts tightened.

"I have footage. I'll send over the pertinent details once I'm airborne." He clenched his fist, tempted to punch a hole through the wall. No, better, the glass. Crawling out would give him clear access to the sky. He jerks his wrist and the first thin plates take shape. Small particles interlock in a crawling blood red wave.

"You don't have to do this alone, Stark."

A line the team repeated so many times after Russia. Her expression formed a reserved mask, one he had seen many times before. Never smart to play poker with a Black Widow. The cool chained matrix of nanotech rode up his forearm, a sheet knit together to the lines of his limbs. "It's my problem, not the Avengers. Helen Cho works for Stark Industries. Someone targeted her work."

She nodded. "I get it. It's personal."  
Personal scores to settle. A vendetta. An endless fight to get his revenge for an inexplicable sin. He owed it to Bucky to return to the search, especially after the party. Doctor Cho deserved rescue. His tech was out there, somewhere, in unworthy hands. All were unworthy if they weren't his own.

"I haven't got the resources. Look, if you'd keep an eye open for any developments…" His pride bent far enough to permit that much. He trained his eyes on the ground, waiting for the Bleeding Edge armour to encase him back in the familiar metallic cradle. "Anything, no matter how small."

She nodded, retreating to fetch her coat from the chair. A book and an empty bottle of water stood on the table, proof of her vigil. She deserved better from him, a thanks for her mute support, but he was running on fumes. Natasha said, "Leave the Czech police to me. You foot the bill for the hospital. Call me when you get back to the US, would you?"

He nodded. Going out the window was his only recourse now, especially with the nursing staff clustered outside the door, waiting to enter. Natasha deliberately blocked their access.

He yanked open the window, hinges screeching. Pushing himself through was a close fit, ensuring a new paint job would be attached to his bill, but he leapt into the air. Even the mildest jostling hurt like hell, but he was free. Free to abandon Prague and avenge Josef, and the other scientists slain by an unknown hand.

Or hands.

* * *

Sleep did wonders for a man, even if he hated surrendering precious time to lying blissfully unconscious on a camp cot. The same cot Bucky eventually dragged into his lab. He swore he smelled the traces of cologne and warm metal still there when he woke.

Tony let the tension crawl away as the blessed, familiar silence of his workshop enveloped him. He diverted his path at the last moment, abandoning the Avengers headquarters for his cliffside home. Blessedly cool and quiet, the room drew him in. He pulled out a bottle of water.

"FRIDAY, call Maria Hill."  
The connection rippled through and cut off midring while he queued up files. A second attempt similarly ended up severed, and he hunted around in drawers until he come up with a spare mobile phone. While he punched in numbers, he projected the system interface.

Behind thick layers of encryption, dozens of his algorithms scoured communications networks, the Internet, and all shades of information in between for choice morsels. The phone kept ringing while he waited for the sluggish results to appear in front of him.

He set aside the water bottle after downing the contents in long, thirsty gulps. SHIELD used similar identification protocols to his own shell companies. "Tony Stark. Calling to wish me a happy birthday, Maria, maybe talk about the presents you can give me this year."

The system recognized him and funneled him through. He leaned his head to pin the phone to his shoulder, forced to grab a notebook and pen when two smooth glass screens proved unresponsive.

Something was wrong, and he needed to perform a diagnostic along with about fifty other things crowded at the top of his to do list.

He wanted a rundown on SHIELD intelligence around the alpha lab, and Maria owed him more than a few favours. After they went through the formalities where she asked him what the hell he did in Prague and he demanded gratitude for stopping the wholesale destruction of a Czech neighbourhood, they settled into a taut silence.

"You confirmed visuals on a military-grade anti-tank missile in a server room in Prague." Hill exhaled. "At a site with limited affiliations to Stark Technologies? It sounds like a cut and dry case of corporate espionage on the surface. Steal your goods, destroy the evidence."  
"Too clean cut and obvious. Those nanobots are traceable and programmed to respond to remote command strings. I'll have the thieves locked down by the time it'll take to break the code." Tony tapped his fist on the screen. Orange pixels hung motionless, caught mid-way between an icon transformation. He stared at the small sphere with bent rays. It looked familiar.

Maria made an unflattering noise. "Your arrogance probably got you into this problem in the first place. Look, Eastern Europe is a hotbed for hackers. Whole shops of them set up hammering on security of big companies, rich targets. You're right up at the top of their list. Thundermark, the Justicars, and Dark Room all claim to have swiped account information about your clients and sensitive data, like schematics."

"Elon Musk doesn't have to put up with this." Tony leaned over the counter. He hurt at every level. "I know that. False stories, they've never broken in. I've taken precautions. Bulgarian hackers don't infiltrate buildings, not even Dark Room."

"No, they don't. But they have connections and sponsors, the kind with lots of three letter acronyms. NSA, SAS, KGB." She stopped to deepen her point.

"Thundermark taking KGB money isn't a surprise. Sorry, but I can't see a team of hackers in Sofia or Bucharest paying off someone to leave me a bomb. A Russian missile leaves a fairly clear trail to the Kremlin or the puppet masters." Tony almost spat the words out. He watched the projection screen loop back into a refresh cycle, failing to display anything except hollow boxes lacking any data at all. "You've got eyes out there, tell me what keeps your analysts up at night. Is Dark Room going into mercenary work."

"Apart from your nanotechnology? Thundermark has been allied to nationalist movements in four different countries. Peanut Gallery is a front for the Russian government, and I'm seeing sun wheels and thunder arrows more than I like."  
"Sun wheels?"

"Look at your email. Also, Helen Cho sent an emergency message to a monitored email box." Hill paused. "I sent that to you twelve hours ago. We followed up and authenticated."

"What do you mean, twelve hours ago? I don't have anything except the usual junk in my folders."

"I'll send it again." Hill's voice trailed off. "Any time now."

His fingers manipulated the login screens as the system rejected his requests. Blurred shapes resolved into red bars.

_Access denied._

Another string of characters filled out the password. He struck another string, and the same message flashed up along with a spinning spoked wheel.

Irritation flashed over his face. "Okay, I'm dealing with a few bugs here. Read me the contents."

She promptly did, confirming cold facts. Cho noticed anomalies with their computer systems over a three-hour period. She registered the nanites failing to perform a complex task during the lab procedure. Shortly thereafter Josef, the system engineer, alerted her to a sealed server room door and the cleaner's warning. Phones didn't work. Her message was the last received from the site.

"Remote attack, computer based. Run me some traces in the background and I'll owe you a favour." Tony swiveled onto a stool. "I've got my own problems up here."

"Problems? Stark, I'm going to consider this line compromised. Any further reach out we're going to do the old-fashioned way. I'll route everything through the office." Hill disconnected the call before he had a chance to protest.

For the better. His attention burned on the searing letters taunting him. Someone thought they were going to get the better of Tony Stark, did they? Using his own damn creations against him? They better have good lawyers. He intended to destroy them and raze the earth behind him.

He swore up and down a blue storm. Tapping the bracelet, he said, "Friday, get online and work this out. We've got a problem in the house. Glitches, I'm guessing a virus or a concerted attack."

Friday spun up from the bracelet that he pressed into the slot on the desk, and he was left dumbfounded when another string of _Access denied_ messages rolled across the screens.

"You're locked out, boss. I've used the last two hundred combinations and no luck." Friday's report rang hollow in his ear.

Never was he more grateful for the isolated copy of the system among the nanites than he was now. True, Friday had only a fraction of the computing mower built into the systems in the house and the Avengers headquarters.

"Tell Natasha to shut down the protocols in the Tower," he said. "They're potentially corrupted. Let's get this vault open and see what's left inside."

He needed fresh material, something unconnected to the network. Placing a few calls to have Happy fetch the components he needed, he waded into the storerooms looking for parts -- obsoletes, prototypes, spares. Something he could cobble together with enough computing power to brute force attack his own systems.

Good thing for that nap.

* * *

His wrist burned, the bracelet exuding constant heat. Wires ran six times around his workshop, feeding the eight chained boxes he managed to rig from new parts and spares mothballed in multiple upgrades. Tony gritted his teeth as he scanned over the patchy information his decryption managed to extract, obliterated chunks that formed an incomplete view of the previous day's events.

But he had enough to go on, and what he saw, he disliked. Disdained, in fact. A floating chunk of security footage showing the cleaner hurrying out of the building. A partial transcript translated from Czech of his phone call to police. A spike in data traffic right before the system entered lockdown.

A stray message from the dark web surfaced in front of him, an image composed of alphanumeric characters. He backed up, staring at the eight-legged wheel.

"Friday, what is that?"

"I'm not able to bring up reverse image matching, boss."

Considering the minor task, Tony sat bolt upright. He grabbed his discarded phone doomed for the junk heap, knocking aside a few tools and motherboards. He ran a search on the photo of the wheel flashing overhead, mocking him.

Hit after hit brought up _kolovrat_ , the Slavic sun wheel. That gave him a direction, but not a name. As Friday fought her way through the multilayered password protection, Tony slumped on a seat and ate the bagel Happy brought for him. He thumbed through image archives and search results. Kolovrat was the personal symbol for fairly well-known hacking group ironically known as _Truth and Reconciliation,_ probably some joke he couldn't place.

He had a who, but not much of a what. Truth and Reconciliation functioned on the dark web like most other hacking groups. They targeted a handful of different businesses, and seemed to focus on American and British tech giants.

"Boss, it's clear!"

The red error messages disappeared. He snapped his head up.

Streams of data waited in their custom reports, gleaned from far and wide. He needed only to reach out and touch the pulse of the truth. His emails contained a string of information, though two flicks revealed nothing from Maria Hill. By her own declaration, two unread messages should be waiting.

Slow and cautious, he flicked through the reports. "Friday, put a trace on anything matching sun wheel, kolovrat, Truth and Reconciliation."

"On it," she said.

He stared at the screens for a bit then turned and walked back, grabbing the pad of discarded notepaper. The password he scribbled across the top and stared at it for ten minutes, searching for patterns or clues, something to tell him what the hell he was after.

The decryption programs hammered against the remaining locked files, and he followed their trail as the devastation littered records scattered over four continents. It wasn't until he reached a buried folder of Christmas receipts and addresses that he noticed something amiss.

He tapped for the two frozen screens. "Give me the password again."

"16121HM8II70A1," Friday said.

Tony punched in the numbers and letters in order, his fingers sliding over the smooth glass. A sick pulse clenched his gut, and he swallowed back the rising gorge, threatening to vomit.

He seized the notepad and sliced up the password again. 16. 12. 1. HM. 8. II. 70. A. 1.

The pen trembled in his hand. A wave of numbness crawled over his arm, prompting him to lock his knees, and the floor dipped and wobbled as he stood. "Friday, give me the significance of sixteen and twelve?"

He already had an answer swirling around his mind, an idea jumping out directly from the pattern. Too late. The sickness tossed him in its clutches.

"In 1612, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II died, several witch trials concluded in Europe, and Russia experienced the time of troubles." Friday went on, "December 12 is the twentieth day before the end of the year, Constitution Day in Russia--"  
The pen snapped in two. He spat profanities. Colour bled from his skin and Friday flashed an alarm he ignored. "HM8 70A. Run a trace, any hits in the system, _now._ "

He fell onto the stool, throwing his arms wide. They waved about like a man possessed over the projected screens, cutting through the dross, sifting through a desert for a grain of gold. Someone left him a message loud and clear, something assured to reach his attention.

He found the sun wheel stamped on scanned documents in the legacy archives from his father. Digital fingerprints of the brute force attack lay everywhere in the database, and he followed the breadcrumbs back to a single MP4 among months of stills with a date out of sync with the rest.

It opened with a pinch of his fingers. The camera angle was poor, capturing a swath of dim shops and an Internet café. He recognized the Cyrillic letters on the signs well enough, placing the location in Eastern Europe. Black grainy film resolved to a square thick with pedestrians streaming out through several doorways. They wore thick coats and hats, huddled against the cold. The resolution was poor, and jerked ahead, the timestamps crawling forward.

_2017-09-29. 07:18 AM. 07:22 AM._

His eyes trailed over the blurry features. Smears of pale skin and dark eyes melted together. Few lingered on the sidewalk, but between the streams of disgorged passengers that flowed past, one face stood out.

 _2017-09-29. 07:27 AM._ He froze the frame and rewound it back, commanding the projection to inch forward, sliver by sliver of seconds.

His heart ceased to beat, the breath in his lungs frozen and heavy.

Bucky Barnes ghosted in front of the sidewalk and looked up. He held a smartphone in his hand, and a slim backpack carried the unmistakable squarish outline of a tablet.

 _2017-09-29. 07:25 AM._ The man emerged from the double doors of the cafe, right into a stream of rush hour traffic. His shape vanished past students wearing oversized backpacks, lost to the world behind their headphones, meandering in no real rush. Businessmen in crisp suits cut neat meanders, in their inevitable rush of self-importance. Twice a day Tony could watch the same scene play out in any given intersection around Manhattan.

Two blond girls squeezed together, sharing a private moment, whisked in front of the camera. Then he stood there, alone and apart, no longer concealed. With all his training, from the Red Room to Department X, Bucky knew how to avoid detection. He calculated camera angles by force of instinct borne from his days as the Asset. The reflex never left.

Tony had a whole digital folder of cutaway photos and blurred images, unfixable even to his best techs. More images existed without his boyfriend than with him in frame, clear and crisp.

The one still frame two feet tall surpassed anything taken in the last year.

A low, rolling sound of primeval agony stole its way out of the locked box of repressed emotions under his heart. Resonant vibrations thrummed in his clenched throat and his lips peeled back in a rigid, arcing snarl.

_No. Not possible. No._

Tony collapsed over the desk, the last dregs of strength giving out. His hands went to his face. This couldn't be true. Creating and forging footage wasn't difficult, though recreating Bucky in all his tells was. Lie about a date, falsify with an actor, all totally possible.

_It's not real. I only need it to be him, somewhere in some godforsaken city, looking for me. Waiting for me._

Tears burned his eyes. Again he thought he might be sick. Who else knew his father's license plate? The facts supported the verdict.

Zola, imprisoned. Steve, incapable of this. Nat, verdict out.

The Asset. The Winter Soldier drove down that lonely road and lay in wait. As James Barnes himself said, he forgot nothing.

_Never forget me._

_How could I forget you?_ Promises whispered in the cold pine forest of Long Island felt so very long ago, oaths broken. The bill came due, and it was in front of him.

His composure crumpled. He lay there, stunned, the nearest thing to shell shock beyond emerging from a trench in the smoke and shrapnel.

"Boss, your readings are off the chart. I'm going to call--"

"Steve," he gasped through the tight pain in his chest. "Call Steve. Say emergency. Barnes."

 

* * *

**Slavic Sun Wheel** : 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	4. Zurich

His emergency message changed everything. Their meetup no longer took place at Steve's preferred 0730 hours in New York, but in seventy-five minutes outside Munich. Smackdab during Oktoberfest, when the southern German city heaved with tourists eager for lager and lederhosen. Once Tony would have laughed at the irony, landing in the middle of the festival. The rest of the team's doubts would have chased him all the way into the tents and arms of a buxom bottle blonde named Greta or Alma.  

He instead sat in a business hotel in Zurich, an alpine mountain range and several hundred kilometers away. He chose the place on the strength of its advertised fiber broadband connection. A chair shoved under the door handle assured his private use of the respectable business media center, a three hundred euro tip tucked into the front desk manager's pocket giving further assurance.

The dull grey encryption on the monitor faded. Friday's message first popped up on his mask sixty kilometers out of Geneva, en route to the meetup point. He was lucky not to plow into a farmer's field headfirst.

_Stark Industries tech selling on dark web._

A phrase that sent a tremor of dread deep into his marrow. Fourteen consecutive web searches using a combination of keywords on the other workstation showed no trending articles about Stark Technologies or Stark Industries on the black market, or a sudden crash. Neither had journalists connected the explosion rocking Prague in the early morning to his handiwork or Helen Cho.

Only a matter of time. He might have performed the searches while airborne, blasting his way for his Munich rendezvous, though the armour provided limitations. Spreading out paper on the faux-wood desks brought a decided advantage for his thought processes. After dashing off a message to Happy to pull site audits on all assets in Europe and North America, he spun around in the chair and rolled back to the first computer.

"You better be damn sure this isn't a false positive, Friday," he muttered to himself. The computer speakers issued a tinny resonance when he turned up the Eagles, but he hardly cared. The world had yet to invent a disaster the liquid golden voice of Don Henley could not improve by degrees. When soaring lyrics drowned out his occasional mutter spoken aloud, all the better.

Spending precious time on scouring the dark web through his remote connection seemed a terrible diversion, but he already diverted himself on an apparent goose chase to discover his missing nanites had some tenuous, unclear connection to Bucky Barnes, a man declared MIA for the second time in his century-long life. Tony committed a healthy amount of his mental energy trying to deny the fact enshrined on his phone and a dozen sites scattered around the world.

A single frozen frame of those haunted eyes staring up at a video camera. Mana and saffron took a distant second to that cold, hard evidence that he still failed to believe in. As much as his heart longed to accept Bucky walked the Earth rather than lay in a cold grave somewhere in the permafrost, his mind screamed its denials as a self-defense mechanism.

He struck two buttons onscreen and waited. The connected apps trawling the deep web for information needed time to perform their backflips and multiple decryptions. Plenty of time to flick over the two images superimposed on the screen, along with a slowly creeping percentile in the lower corner.

 _58% match_. _44% complete_. The image recognition software package developed a few years ago he intended to market to law enforcement around the US and its allies, something that might help pick out people from a crowd as much as allow biometric logins. After seeing most agencies and corporations might abuse it, he'd mothballed the project. Never thought he might take it out again to confirm whether an image or video might be doctored.   

Tony drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Time slipped away. He needed minimum thirty minutes to reach Munich. Any longer and Steve would spin the Quinjet around to look for him. Not something he wanted to deal with right now; the matter of Stark tech on the black market was his private concern and not a matter for Captain Rogers to pick apart.

Some days, it really didn't pay to get out of bed. Vibrations rocked his phone and he slid it out from under a stack of papers. Disturbed notes cascaded off the slope to the floor, unacknowledged while he sat back heavily. Every inch of Tony's body hurt. Even his gums felt dry and tacky, unalleviated by the handful of aspirin he chased with a bottle of carbonated water to keep the worst of his injuries at bay.

He'd had worse. He could plow through this latest setback. For Bucky's sake. For his own, because a black-market sale was a personal affront.

While the workstations blinked and their screens refreshed, he flicked over the phone. Two reports popped up. He flagged them and scrolled on, then rushed back to the first line of the top message.

 _Stark wpn sale, exclusive mats. Private display and auction_. The headline stopped him cold. He dragged up the message and scowled. It originated out of a murky marketplace deep in forbidden territory online where arms dealers and black-market sellers traded in everything possible, even human lives.

Instructions relayed via Friday on the command prompt directed the workstation browser to the same location on an untraceable feed. Through the AI's rapid processing and skillful negotiation, he found the same message staring at him in larger font. As he scrolled down, he found no other information except a signature file attached at the bottom. When it opened, he exhaled sharply and sat back.

The damn sun wheel. Black lines sharply bent around a central disk, almost identical to the cruder alphanumeric drawing he found earlier. No, people weren't incidentally fucking with him. This Truth and Reconciliation group, whomever they really were, declared war. Prague got his attention, infiltrating his home gave unforgivable offense. Taking away his name -- everything he bled and sweat to rebuild after his father's death -- went a step too far.

" _Carthago delenda est_." The old Latin maxim from his high school years sprang to mind. Some ancient Roman senator declaring that a prosperous city needed to be razed off the face of the Earth sounded ridiculous and dramatic, the sort of pompous declaration made in a bad play. He sure as hell felt a kinship to the long-dead speaker, Plato or Cato or whomever he was.

Truth and Reconciliation's days were numbered.

 _Fuck. I do not have time for this_. The alarm rattled on his phone, the first of several set to precisely monitor his remaining time.

Someone rattled the door handle. Hushed voices in apologetic German tried to soothe ruffled feathers. Indignant replies rattled over the next classic Eagles tune pumped out from the speakers. An itch developed between his shoulder blades. Time, he needed more time, and no power short of God could give him that much of a gift. He dispatched another an instruction for Friday to keep monitoring and expedite any further news.

Bucky's face peered out of the digital void in crude detail. Scratched fingers covered in a few scabs spread out to trace the hard edges of cheekbones. "I miss you. You know you're worth all the headaches, don't you?"

The phone blipped again, body aquiver. The AI bombarded the screen with one second pulses every few moments until he unlocked it.

_Bazaar scheduled for exclusive materials arranged by T &C. This is the real deal, don't miss out. Spaces limited. 51 bitcoins for further details and prospectus. Send message to attached address within twelve hours. Serious inquiries only. _

They couldn't be serious. Someone purporting to sell his company's equipment on the dark web was nothing new. Tony kept a team of people to deal with that. T&C stuck out. _Truth and Reconciliation. Whoever you are, you've got a set of brass balls._

He didn't need to see the ASCII image of a sun wheel that followed from another source tagged afterwards, or the six other messages posted in oily sites. Different emails followed the same offers. Funding international criminal consortiums looked terrible for a civilian, much less Tony Stark. From his standpoint, he saw few other alternatives for a viable lead.

Life happened at a crawl interspersed with occasional sprints, a speed he generally loathed. Simple business to execute a command. Fifty-one bitcoins transferred to an unknown account in a second. All he could do was wait for a response.  

Fifty-five minutes left. Another bottle of water stood in the mini-fridge and he helped himself, forcing down cold mouthfuls. The last he poured onto a wad of paper towels and sponged the cut on his forehead. Satisfied little blood remained, he threw the damp mass into the trash and gathered up his notes. No point leaving them behind for any foreign agents to read. He folded them and stuffed them into a clean wastebasket liner, lacking even a backpack.

"Boss, incoming." Friday's voice peeped from the phone speaker. "I'm running a trace."

He dropped the phone in his haste to read the message. It bounced over the floor to a halt. Cursing, Tony forced his cramping fingers over the keyboard. A few strokes shut down the workstation displaying progress on identifying whether the video capture on his server was a fake.

A web address embedded in a message lay in front of him. He thumbed it. Winnowing through networks, Friday assembled a page on the screen stripped of tracking information. There wasn't much to read. He saw a few photographs. Boxes. A diagnostic sheet printed out with the Stark Technologies logo on it. Another with Stark Industries.

_A taste of the bazaar to come. Minimum $100,000 deposit in cryptocurrencies required to confirm attendance. Max +2 entourage for all attendees. Bazaar held in a secure location in 27 hours. Travel arrangements to be confirmed upon reception of deposit._

Truth and Reconciliation provided an absurd number of crisp, detailed forms on par with the NDA packages handed out like candy during Silicon Valley hostile acquisitions. Disbelief elbowed a bark of mirthless laughter out of him. Strange world when even the cyberterrorists were providing guarantees and gentleman's agreements to other arms dealers.

Another image popped into the same mailbox. It contained a crisp digital shot of a thin case lacking any distinguishing characteristics except its narrow clasps and organic, converging curves. He knew the design anywhere:

A similar container originally housed the nanites that formed the Bleeding Edge armour until he produced the stable matrix of the bracelet.

The floor fell out from under him and he went still.

They could erase his legacy. They could smear his name and threaten his friends. But if the rabble put his lover back into a living nightmare, Tony vowed silently nothing would curb his revenge.

Another alarm chimed. He severed the remote connection and claimed his bag of papers. Time to get to work. Steve and Nat awaited.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	5. Munich

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony comes clean to the Avengers.

"It's him. He's alive." Steve circles around the projected café, a grainy monochrome still life, to drink in every detail. Grey silhouettes of pedestrians caught midstep overlap his face and white t-shirt. Their indistinct faces smile at his shoulder and bicep. All wrong for the deep frown carved into his steely expression.

Tony's fists bunched and the tocsin of his pulse filled his skull. _No shit, Sherlock._

 _94.25% match with J. B. Barnes_. The number blipped in the corner of the image. Accusing digits seared his retinas. He already knew the margin of error for the program. Friday cross-referenced every photo he had on file.

The myriad scans he ran confirmed no doctoring of the video. Natasha concurred after examining the metadata and scouring the file. He still couldn't quite believe his eyes. The heart longed and the mind rebelled. Bucky surfacing out of thin air was nothing new, but hours after a blast in Prague and his nanotech broke out of quarantine?

His back to them, Steve pored over the still frame of Bucky almost as long as Tony had. "This was deliberate. Showing his face like this tells us something, it's a message. Our next step is recovery."

A file happened to wait for him behind a convenient security breach. It was too good to be true and life taught him anything like that deserved suspicion and contempt. Tony swallowed.  
"You're getting ahead of yourself, Rogers."

"Really, Tony? I thought you'd be the first out the door." Steve's brows shot up.

Whole new world from pre-war Brooklyn. He didn't need to say that aloud. The galvanized silence spoke volumes. "Nothing proves that's Bucky. We have a positive hit for a lookalike coinciding with an attack to steal my nanotech, and no clear idea how the two are connected."

"Bucky knows you better than just about anyone. He had a way to get your attention. You don't think he might have an in and tried to send a warning?"

"Barnes working with hackers and cyber criminals when he could pick up a phone? No, I don't see the connection. Nat, back me up on this one."  
Calling on the redhead was a risk. Her time in the Red Room gave her better insight to the other side of Bucky's character than about any other resource he had access to. Her lips thinned and she shook her head, refusing to look up from her computer. "I don't have enough data to assess the situation yet. Keep your options open. Ruling anything out now feels a bit premature."

Those golden brows lifted higher, vanishing under Steve's bangs. "This," he gestured at the paused video, "provides the first concrete evidence in months that Buck is out there. Lying around on your computer. That's no accident."  
His logic was sound enough. Too sound. "Exactly where I'd expect hackers to plant evidence to entice me into action."  
A chuckle closer to a death rattle left Steve's throat. "Listen to the words you're saying, Stark. I know Buck. I've known him for a long time. How he thinks and how he works. This kind of action comes right out of his playbook. He is calling for help. You know that too if you think about it."

The low blow about knocked Tony off the chair. He had expected all sorts of complaints from Steve, but not pulling a sympathy card. He clenched his aching stomach muscles and the protesting ache helped center him.

"Then why not reach out to you, Rogers?"

"Anyone watching will expect me to be his first point of call. We don't know who he is with, what kind of surveillance he has. Our safest bet assumes he's under constant watch," Steve said.

He grunted. Nice and neat for a theory, though life rarely turned out neat and tidy. He was supposed to find a malfunctioning system glitch and Helen Cho coming out with her ridiculous mug of coffee, asking the purpose of his visit, not an empty building rigged to a Russian missile. The debrief on Russia declared a simple rescue mission, not a horror show that left the Avengers limping back to safety, in total disarray, absent one leader.

Steve twisted that knife a little deeper. "He needed something clear and subtle. Bucky knew you were smart enough to break the code and find him. He trusts you. Look, you're in no condition to mount a recon mission on your own. Let go of your pride, Tony. Let us help."

Second low blow. Playing dirty for a reaction, maybe. Tony refused to rise to the bait. "We've got no proof he is on our side. Sorry, facts are facts. He could be working for anyone. Or he went rogue."

Not simply anyone. Truth and Reconciliation, a consortium of underworld hackers, currently seemed the most likely parties. Tony struggled to understand how Bucky, of all people, fell in with hackers. Too many variables left up in the air prevented him from settling on a decision with any certainty.

"He made it plain and clear he is alive and needs a rescue. You going to ignore the emergency flare because you might see shadows moving around?" Big blue eyes widened and the mask of calm slipped, showing a sliver of anger. Bucky was as much Steve's friend as Tony's.

Even more, back in the day. A long time ago, they had been close, those ties forged by war and hardship. Howard Stark told the stories about their reckless adventures and crazy tall tales. Bucky occasionally talked about the man closer to him than a brother, a shared bond thicker than blood.

As if he could read Tony's thoughts, Steve drew a breath. "I'm not leaving him behind."

Tony felt like he'd been slapped by that powerful hand.

"The data is almost twenty-four hours old. Whatever trail we had is effectively cold," Natasha said, hunched over her tablet. "With a day's head start, we're looking at global reach." The past hour she spent glued to the screen, refining images or playing Minecraft for all they knew.

Unable to stay still, Steve stalked around the table again for another angle, a different view, something to shake out clues.

Tony couldn't blame him for stalking in circles past the two-dimensional image. He needed affirmation of the details himself. Another shot of the same street two minutes later painted a wall, taken to maximum magnification. Image quality suffered but the blocky pixels together formed Bucky in three-quarter profile. He was unmistakable to anyone who spent any length of time studying him, and the trio in the room certainly had.

Another circuit brought Steve face to blurry face with his best friend. "I won't accept that as an answer."

Of course he wouldn't. Tony wanted to hate him. Tear down that confidence with his bare, cut hands. Steve spent a year solid looking for the Asset after a tortured reunion in New York, a rendezvous that nearly killed him.

Tony wasn't ready to accept anything less than a complete rescue either. Thing was, nothing pointed to Bucky acting on his own volition, let alone crying out for help in the middle of a crisis bringing Stark Industries down around Tony's ears. Here he was, sitting around in a Munich safehouse acquired by SHIELD instead of jetting out first thing to Russia.

"So what's your master plan?" Acid etched sarcasm filled his voice. Natasha shook her head.

"Locate, obtain, and exfiltrate Bucky as soon as possible."

The anger sailed right over Steve's head, running off him like a duck to water. Nothing ever affected him unless he wanted to. Jealousy crept through the wounds in Tony's heart. His battered body came a distant second in the list of problems.

"Tony." The redhead sat stiff in her seat. "We're not getting anywhere by arguing. Our goals are one and the same. If Barnes is out there, he needs to come in from the cold. We can bet on resistance for any exfil."

"Including Buck himself. Don't rule that out."

"We aren't. Let's get into the operational details," Steve said. "We have any leads on the phone? He was calling someone, we need to know who."  
"Burner phone on a cheap network. It was deactivated at 8:45 local time." Nat reported from her seat, nose back to the digital grindstone. How she managed to keep track of her research, the conversation, and the moods in the room remained a mystery to Tony. "The call went through an app, not the mobile network, which makes things considerably more difficult from our perspective. It might take me hours to come up with decent intel. He took pains to cover his tracks."  
"Keep on it," Tony said. "Try calling Maria. See if they can get a bead on him."

"Negative." Steve rested his hands on his hips, and the frown carved onto his face increasingly looked like a permanent addition. "Tipping off SHIELD will make him rabbit. We've got other resources for apps and computers, right?"

They had plenty. How many assets they wanted to expend on informing the spy world that Captain America -- the second one -- lived remained an open question. A leak to the wrong parties could lead to disaster, assuming Bucky even voluntarily sought them out. That he wasn't playing them all like a virtuoso.

Tony rubbed his face. "Look, I'm still in favour of keeping this classified. A need-to-know basis until we understand why he's out there in the middle of nowhere--"

Bent over her screen, Natasha never looked up. Her fingers flew over the keyboard and she swiveled to the laptop beside her. "St. Petersburg isn't nowhere."

"Close enough to the Arctic Circle to be nowhere. As I was saying, we keep this under wraps. We don't know who we're dealing with. Fewer people on the inside, the better."

Frozen black lines rippled across Steve's tanned skin and snapped into crisper resolution when he stopped at the table. He picked up the empty coffee cup and looked in. "Operationally sound judgment. That said, we need a way to respond, a hook in. Buck never does anything by chance. He reached out to us, he is ready to go."

"We've got no proof he meant this to reach us. _Someone_ did. That someone could be anyone," Tony said. "Certainly not guaranteed to be a friend, either, The file didn't end up in my database by accident."

"How can you be so sure?"

Tony waved his hand. "I had that archive partitioned from the network." To Steve's puzzled look, he stifled the need to sigh. "Those files came from Dad's archives. They were on a computer isolated from any computers connected to the Internet. So someone had to get in to the network, then jump over a fence to find a house without an address, and stick the package in a hidden corner they guessed I would stumble over."

"Breaking into Stark's network is a lot harder to do than it sounds." The redhead grimaced at the results on her screen and put the tablet aside. "The number of people able to do that is low. Barnes might be able to. _Might_. With help, though..."

It wasn't like her to cast aside anything, not in the heat of the moment. Tony scooted his rolling chair over to her side. As he lifted the tablet, he stared at the orange sun wheel on a black background.

She frowned at the screen. "It completely locked up. Is that what I think it is?"

A warning bell rang in his head. Tony's hands shook as he stared into the device. The clues all fell together. She knew more than she let on. Surely she figured out the links with the hacked nanites showing up on the black market, the Eastern European hackers, and Bucky caught in the tangled weave.

No choice but to answer. "The same symbol appeared all over the network when I was locked out at home. It belongs to a hacker group called Truth and Reconciliation."

He propped the screen up on the desk and linked a nanite-loaded device into a port. The nanites loaded with the same copy of Friday would easily overpower any casual hacks on the safehouse. Red dots appeared around the screen and a warning flashed over the systems around them. Steve's back stiffened as the room took on the feel of a sub detected a thousand feet down.

"Tell me that's something you can fix." He shot a look between the redhead and the brown-haired playboy.

Natasha lifted her hands and Tony swung into action, jamming his bracelet flat to the console. "Friday's got this. Third time I've found something compromised since Prague. What little data I gleaned from the alpha lab's computers says Truth and Reconciliation is behind hacking into the nanites there, too. My guess is they put the video of Bucky in my archives."

While the AI overrode the corrupted data, he pushed his chair back to the table.

Steve planted his palms flat and leaned forward. "Truth and Reconciliation. You mentioned them before in your message from New York. Why would they target you, Tony? Have the Avengers ever dealt with them?"

Natasha resumed her typing. "No, never directly. They might go after him in principle. CEO for one of the world's biggest companies? That's a pretty tempting target."

"First time I've seen them deal with any Stark Industries affiliate. I mean, yes, it was only a matter of time they targeted us," Tony said. "They specialize in tech companies. But the nanite project? They got lucky -- too lucky -- or had inside information."

She kept her head down. Light shone on her fiery hair and Steve pulled up a chair. Natasha said, "No records of any big jobs. Unlike some groups, Truth and Reconciliation doesn't sign their name to much. They keep a low profile, so they've got someone scrubbing their prints or they go for littler fish."

"Cleaning up after them." Tony grimaced. "I'm certain of it. They have someone good in there to avoid leaving a trail."

Nothing worse than a government actor, Bucky, and cyberterrorists in the same mission.

"That leaves an open question how and why they got your nanite technology. You ask me, Bucky caught wind of their efforts. The timing is too convenient," Steve said.

Why Bulgarian and Romanian hackers, why Bucky? The six million dollar question. He fidgeted in his seat. For quite some time, Steve looked off at the frozen image in silence. The susurrus of Natasha's gentle typing lulled Tony into a fugue.

"What's in the name?" Steve said.

Tony went back to looking at the frozen image of Bucky and the pedestrians dashing through St, Petersburg's streets. Trust Steve to draw out the tangible details and then throw something completely out of left field. He probably would have been a mean pitcher back in the day.

"Who knows, irony? Their symbol comes out of Slavic paganism. They target mostly Western corporations and receive funding string of shell accounts leading back to Russia," he said. "Dislike of capitalism is good motive as any. Disregarding the filthy rich oligarchs milking the Russian people dry and all, do they need anything more?"

Expression softening, the blond nodded. "Bucky represents the subversion of all they loved into something they hated. Irony there, but a reasonable motive. He could have used that to gain access."

Tony thought he was going to be sick. The bruises and cuts laid over beaten flesh burned despite the cocktail of painkillers he downed. A pale pain compared to the wrenched misery in his heart.

Steve was talking again. "What do we have for surveillance in St. Petersburg?"

With a few flicks of his fingers, Tony superimposed a colour image of the Internet café on the greyscale street. Awnings winked in yellow and green, and a few potted plants perked up with digital flowers not present before. Cars lined up against the curb. The other side of the street filled in with shops and a subway station. Flat pictures spread out around.

"Here's the street from a few weeks ago," he said. "That's a twenty-four hour café. No footage available remotely. What I could review showed no one matching his relative height and size entering."

"So we're dealing with a back entry. How many doors does that place have?"  
"Three. None monitored."

"Two other points of entry. Nat, you got anything else?"

"From what I gained from the CCTV footage, he goes into the station and vanishes. Doesn't emerge at any station in either direction for two hours. I'm looking for anything else. The system is running hot, by the way," she said.

"Diagnostics and active security protocols will cause some slowdowns. I'm not taking chances about this getting out because Bob opened his suspicious email and let out a sniffer on a server." Tony's hands threatened to shake.

Variations on the scene replayed itself many times over the course of the past two years. They sat together, Tony and Steve at the central table, Natasha in front of her computers. Coffee and sandwich wrappers piled up in a corner. Examining notes and making phone calls gave a lead, and they chased down every scrap of information they could fine. Sometimes they had a breakthrough. Most of the time they batted about bad ideas.

Tony fucking hated ops. They were nearly as bad as debrief meetings. Everything happened slow and meticulously. He needed activity at a breakneck speed, and though he respected the thoroughness, Nat and Steve insisted on combing through the evidence at a painfully slow speed.

When Bucky ran the team, they held meetings standing up and wasted little time getting to the point. God, he missed that.

A tilt of his head brought him back to that haunted, gaunt face. Tangible, living proof someone who looked like Barnes was out there.

"We're going to need to get on the ground and ask questions." Steve dropped the cup on the table and poured water from the carafe. "You want any?"  
Lifting his hand, Tony waved off a drink. The only kind that might help he was patently forbidden from binge drinking hard liquor. Bucky extracted that promise long ago. No matter how tempting a bottle of single malt sounded, he declined.

"I want the truth as much as you. But jumping right into the middle of the Russian Federation is suicide in the current political climate. Double that we have zero idea if anyone wants to point a Sagger at us and pull the trigger."

Natasha cleared her throat. "Let's not disregard the obvious, either."

"That piloting the Quinjet into Russian airspace after we publicly accused them of colluding to kill Captain America _may_ be a problem?" Tony chewed on his cuticle, another old, bad habit coming to the surface. Stress made them all leak out of confinement. "Maybe we can send a gift basket."

"What, Nat?" Steve ran right over his protests, per usual. Damn bull-headed soldiers, always going straight into battle.

"Barnes is working with Truth and Reconciliation." There. She said it, naming the elephant in the room and slapping a collar on it.

"Impossible," Steve said.

"Second worst case scenario," Tony added overtop him.

They both stared at her while she leaned back in her seat, careless of the attention boring into her. He'd never known her to speak carelessly. The sick dread crawling around in his belly made a home somewhere midway up his esophagus. Sweat dotted his hairline.

"Stark ever tell you what Doctor Cho was up to in Prague?" she asked quietly.

His hand hit the table. "What--"

"Tony…" A low rumble ran before the thunderous look thrown at him. "Explain."  
Both of them fell so casually into Natasha's web, they failed to follow where her feminine mind went. He prided himself on genius and forgot the redhead could kick him out at the knees and put him flat on his back. Who else trained her but Bucky?

 _I should have consulted her at the start and left Steve out of this._ No one would know where he buried the body afterward, if it came to that.

His silence stretched too long. Steve looked at Natasha. Tony's pleas made in silence fell on deaf ears.

"Nanotech for medical purposes. Repairing tissue, correcting deformities and genetic anomalies. One stop patch-up kits," she said.

"Military uses?"  
"Not officially." Her gaze swept over Tony, and if she tried to convey an apology, he failed to read anything in those dark, clear eyes. His fingers curled into a clenched fist.

Steve ground his teeth, the sound audible at a distance. "You didn't think to disclose this at the start?"  
"They're used for civilian purposes. Contracting with _Doctors Without Borders_ and the Red Cross," Tony snapped. "I never reached out to the military. Not once. Learned that lesson the hard way, remember? This was strictly for medical facilities, treating chronic or terminal cases. You know, the kind kids die from, the wasting diseases that transform healthy adults into walking skeletons in a year."  
"No, they just found you and got what they wanted instead. This is how it goes every time, Tony. You make something recklessly without considering the consequences," Steve began.

The chair hit the ground. Tony was up on his feet, thrusting a finger at him. "You don't get to make me into a monster over this, Rogers. Nanite technology revolutionizes medicine. It's the breakthrough for third world countries, lowering costs. I took every precaution--"  
"That failed. You've got technology light years ahead of anything out there in the wrong hands."  
Natasha watched the sparring and cleared her throat. "Probably shifted fast by Truth and Reconciliation. They wouldn't hold onto it for long. If they were smart, they would have buyers lined up already. Government, mercenary. Plenty of deep pockets."

Was she reading his screen? Had she seen the sale information and drawn the same conclusions? Her skill in cyber espionage ranked right up there at the top, and Tony felt a cold hand trickle down his back.

"There was a Russian missile on site." Steve's mouth went white. "Russian militants are a good bet. Even working through sympathetic allies. Anyone else to consider?"

Tony needed to leave. He had a location and a time for unknown parties selling his tech on the dark web. Happy owed him initial audit findings to narrow down any missing supplies, misrouted materiel or suspicious accounts. A formality to ease Tony's conscience, but he was certain the hackers acquired a single payload of any value. The stolen nanites roamed out there, answering another master through corrupted programming.

Could the same be said for the man he loved?.

"People that Bucky knew," he said slowly. "I'm not convinced he isn't invested in this somehow. The wrong way."

"All the more reason to get Bucky out now. I'm sure he has names. Names lead us to perpetrators, and we can shut them down," Steve added.

Silent while they spoke, Natasha timed her interruption to the moment they were both staring at Bucky's mute likeness superimposed over the wall and a chair. "The sooner the better. This was no accident. They waited until the tech was stable to make their move, didn't they? How did they obtain that information? You've been compromised. Occam's razor, Bucky makes a good source. He knew you were working on the project."

Tony's worst nightmares took shape before him, unspooling the last shreds of calm keeping him together. Too much trauma in the past day dampened his tolerance to a breaking point. "Any other accusations you want to make, Natasha? I thought he was your friend, too."

Her eyes narrowed and she lifted her chin. "It had to be said, Tony. I never said he worked with them voluntarily. You're discounting a key possibility."  
"What possibility?"  
Steve sat heavily on the table. "They're making soldiers with them. Soldiers like us. Buck makes a good template, even if he wasn't giving up information. I can't believe he is, Nat."  
"With my nanotech? That's…" Tony halted. The probability had always been there. All his creations invariably drew criticism and jealousy. But few people knew anything about the nanorobotics program he funded, and the vetting process at the Prague alpha lab and his beta lab in Perth were comprehensive.

They shared enough grace to let him absorb the information and draw his own conclusion. Repressing the need to throw the pitcher at both of them, he backed away through the colourful street scene.

"You haven't got proof of that. We're going on speculation, Nat."

The room closed in. He wanted out. That meant blowing past Steve, but maybe better to dash for fresh air while they still had some kind of lead. He couldn't believe Bucky called for help, but working actively with a group of elite hackers? That made no sense either. Selling him out?  
No. Not even with the programming. They tried so long, so hard, to break the protocols left by the Soviets. Digging up the buried landmines in Bucky's brain, disabling them, all in hopes of giving him freedom.  

"Nanotech would give anyone a hell of an advantage for making a better soldier. Guys who heal on the field won't stop fighting. Imagine the longevity you get if fatigue toxins no longer affect them." That was Captain America talking, no longer Steve from Brooklyn. He looked ill. "You think that's what Bucky tried to warn us about?"

"Good chance of it," Nat murmured.

Vibrations discreetly danced over his. Tony palmed his phone, colour fading from his face. Friday displayed another message. _Confirmation to attend the bazaar received. You are expected to arrive in 18 hours._

"Bucky wouldn't agree to support that," Steve said. "He's stronger than before the Soviets had him. Before Zola. I still believe that until you show me evidence to the contrary. But no matter, we need to shut down any possible program, and the easiest way to do that is deprived them of the nanobots."

"Got it." The answer accompanied a weak nod.

"After you rest," Natasha said. Her interruption jarred him out of mentally planning.  
Rest. He could do that when he was dead. Too much rode on swift response, before Truth and Reconciliation fully realized who they were dealing with. That the Avengers connected the dots and came with the cavalry. "We can't afford that. Don't be stupid. I'm not sleeping at a time like this."

"Stark, you were blown up, had a building fall on you, and spent how long trying to break into your own house. Be reasonable." Steve's pained expression twisted into a set mask that belonged on a pitbull with its favourite toy.

She nodded. "He's right. You can wait a few hours to recuperate."

"Weren't you the one who said the trail was growing cold? And, Steve, you were giving the 'these weapons must not fall into the wrong hands' speech. Or am I going deaf?" Tony rubbed his ear in an exaggerated gesture. "Nope, not seeing sleep fall into the equation."

They watched him across the table. Natasha slid the tablet sidelong and Steve leaned over, shading the contents with his body. "Who said you had to take this on yourself? We're a team. We manage it together."

Those words went straight through his hard, sharp and straight as arrows, fletched in bald truth. He opened his mouth to protest.

"Take a break, Tony. Get some rest. You're off-duty." Steve fell back into Captain mode, issuing orders with curt, well-meant precision. That was the worst part, he looked out for everyone and had their back.

Tony stalked past him. "You're not my captain, Rogers. Remember that."

With his back turned, he didn't have to see the expression on Steve's face, the slump of his shoulders by half an inch, or the haunted look scoring his eyes. The avenging angel in all his golden, flaming glory had failed the one person who mattered most.

"Tony, knock it off. This isn't helping." Nat's warning tone matched her turning his way. One good bite from her bracelets would drop him without his armour. He wasn't a super soldier, like them. His condition, though great in his cardiologist's eyes, wasn't enhanced by any serum or perverse Soviet experiment. All he had was words.

And he was very accurate with them, a terribly sharp aim. "Hey, he's alive, isn't he? That means he has the shield, he calls the shots. Not you. So as far as I'm concerned, it's game time."  
The last fumes of rage carried him out the door. If they weren't helping, they were in his way and he couldn't afford that. He needed them to realize he had everything under control. Seeing Bucky galvanized him before, but now doubt and fatigue eroded his nerve. Tony had to act.

He'd save his company's good name and score a victory for the good guys to boot. Maybe in the process, he would save Bucky. Take down some hackers, get the prince, like a real hero.

He needed to believe it himself.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	6. Asia Minor

"Nanotech for sale on the deep web. Doesn't that make me feel safe at night." Clint hunched over in a chair, staring at the screen captures that Natasha printed off. He rifled through them with all the skill of a seasoned operative, the usual mask of a madcap guy obsessed with irony and pizza departed. "What's fifty cryptocurrency worth? This one is called joycoin. If the exchange rate is like anything the bitcoin, it's a pretty hefty bar to enter an online marketplace."

"About four hundred thousand dollars US, give or take. That's an in-person meeting, by the way." Natasha tapped her fingers on the ceramic coffee cup, fire engine red nail varnish striking a note on the absurd yellow happy face.

"That's a lot of money for fake weapons and nanotech. Seems to me like anyone forking over fifty bitcoin or joycoin or whatever expects to see the real deal," Clint said.

She nodded absently, the majority of her attention drifting away past their blond captain to a mobile phone replaying the short video from St. Petersburg. Bucky Barnes emerged out of the aether to face the camera, a direct line of view offered to a dead man. A man presumed lost on a mission, vanished into the cold of the Russian Far East, where the border blurred with North Korea and China. Intel dried up a year ago, swirling around too many miserable outcomes. She paid the spectre a moment of respect, and then turned her attention to their leader. He seemed to be bearing up as best as could be expected, leading them rather than rushing off into battle.

Steve Rogers reclaimed the mantle of Captain America with regret and misgivings after his apparent rebirth. He shouldered the burden uncomplaining. Fate intercede to slap him across the face, and remind them all he was a living ghost left to wonder for the third time in his life what became of his best friend.

"You can bet there will be angry customers if they show up and find out they've been had," Steve said from the center table. "As much as we wish it were otherwise, take these reports seriously. The goods stolen from Prague came on the market. We can be sure the buyer will put them into service. Anything you can find, share it. We need to know what we're going into."

"I think I speak for everyone when I say a hornet's nest. Someone with a deep bank account, Russian anti-tank missiles, and a love for Tony's work gives three great reasons to hurry along and swipe these bots. Put them back where they belong." Fingers burrowing deep to the muscles of his nape, Clint groaned as a knot weakly gave.

Chunks of data filled monitors encircling the room, the gleanings from the darkest, harshest corners of the online world where monsters dared to tread. Steve stood apart from it all as though he might avoid the oily mental residue of staring at forums and sites where anonymous actors traded in human lives, mercenaries, and drugs. His hand flexed. The others gave him space.

Deep in thought over his laptop and a screen wired into a workstation, Sam gave a quiet frown. "So why didn't Tony tell us about this, Steve? Cyberterrorists dealing in futuristic nanotech from Stark Labs sounds pretty bad, but we've handled far worse. Instead we have to mop this up going in blind while he naps?"  
"Air his dirty laundry to us? Come on, Sam, you know better." Disappearing nose-deep to the screens again, Clint resumed combing through the multitudes of files. Barring any assistance from Tony's decryption software or SHIELD materials, he relied solely on his skills navigating the deep web and deciphering esoteric acronyms and references. "Tony has never been the sort to share information willingly. Especially not where Stark Industries is involved."

Airing concerns and cares was one thing. Despite his misgivings, Steve shook his head. "He's following orders and taking a few hours to sleep. Badly needed after Prague."

"After breaking out of a hospital. He's being too damn stubborn," Sam said. "It's going to bite him in the--"

Conscious of the tense atmosphere, he wisely bit off the choice word hovering on his lips and resumed his research. So much for a chance to kick back with a pint of German beer and brats, his first assumption when Steve and Nat summoned them for an emergency meeting in Munich.

"Shoulda known better than to think we were rescuing tourists from Oktoberfest," Sam said.  
"Don't I wish." Clint snorted. "Now we gotta pull stop half the criminals on the Internet from showing up to buy micro-robots and building an army of cybermen. You know that turned out really badly on _Doctor Who_?"

Steve raised his eyebrows.

" _Doctor Who_? British television show. Time travelers? Guy in a blue phone box?" Clint prompted him after successive looks of confusion deepened the line on the blond's forehead. "Aw, come on. We've gotta binge a few seasons. After this, you and I are watching the joys of David Tennant and Matt Smith."

"Let's not start a doomsday scenario with cyborg soldiers," Sam said. "We're going to fix the problem before it gets that far. Show up, reclaim the tech, stop any crazy Russians from injecting nanites into the best from the Spetnaz."

The redhead uncrossed her legs and sat back in her seat, the subtle creaking signalling the first time she moved in fifteen minutes. "Word of Stark-branded materiel selling on the black market hitting the media will give him a lot more trouble than proving he's mortal in front of us. Shutting us out is an act of pride."

"That's just it, Nat." Steve paced in front of the monitors, his back to the bank. "His father wasn't a whole lot different. Howard hated being called out. You should have seen it when a reporter called him out for a malfunction or a competitor claimed his inventions were phony. He took it personal, really personal. Tony's got even more to prove. He put up a fight even telling us."

He didn't have to say why. They all knew exactly what lay on Tony Stark's shoulder, and how big a chip that was. Silence hung uncomfortably in the air.

Leaning back in his chair, Clint craned a look over his shoulder. He managed to hold the awkward position, knee balanced up against the countertop. "Steve, look. I know you're big on this being on the down low, but you're sure we shouldn't talk to SHIELD? Seems like shutting down this hacker group and figuring out their buyers is right up some analyst's alley, not really ours."

"We're playing it close to the chest. We don't know who has feelers out, especially if they're monitoring communications," Steve said.

The chair creaked louder as the archer leaned back even further. "We're talking Barnes now, aren't we? Not only these Truth and Reconciliation people."  
"I think we're right to worry about all parties. Could be contacts for terrorist organizations as much as cranks living off the grid and eager to keep it that way." Concern wore deep lines at the corners of Sam's mouth. He nudged his laptop side and rolled his chair back. "No telling who is listening to see, checking out the competition. Truth and Reconciliation hasn't been subtle about what they picked up. Anyone with the cash can see the photos and draw their own conclusions."

"I still say we engage with Maria. Tell her what's going on, get some backup. This many heavy hitters in the market gives me the heebie-jeebies, Steve." Clint crossed his arms, leather vambraces flexing against his muscles. "We don't know the when or the where. She can get that for us. Unless you've got four hundred grand to blow on a goose chase."

It wasn't that they upset Steve. His clear blue eyes travelled over each of them in turn and drew off towards the wall. How could he describe a feeling without sounding nonsensical? Some gut reactions came from the blend of experience and unshakeable faith, and he lacked the right words to give them form. The dimple marked his cheek, though he had no smile, and his head tipped forward. For a moment he might have been a rueful young man about to share an unpleasant but essential truth instead of their leader, their beacon of hope in a dark world.

"No, no giving money to hackers. No telling what we'll be funding with that," he said.

"Then how you plan on getting access?" Clint squinted at them.

"We go dark, we get in, and we act quick. This needs to be shut down. These hackers know what the nanites can do, otherwise they never would have broken them out from the Czech lab. That leaves us in a bad position.".

Natasha nodded in silent agreement.

"The folks playing on this stage are big fish," Sam added. "They'll be willing to kill for something like human-compatible nanotech. Having additional friendly boots on the ground would be an asset but I'm not sure we have the time to bring SHIELD in. Maria's going to have questions." An understatement; the assistant director of SHIELD had an analytical mind like a steel trap and an unbending expectation for answers before she ever dipped her toe in the water. Spending six hours grilled by Maria Hill suited no one.  
"We don't." Steve paused, weighing up the right way to explain himself. His teammates knew his mind and habits, but they all had their own grievances and takes. "This meeting is key. I expect Truth and Reconciliation -- or their sponsor, if they've got one -- will make a demonstration of what the nanites can do. Sam's right. No one will put out money without seeing the goods in action. That's what I would expect, in their shoes. T&C may already have subjects ready and waiting. We can't afford to let that happen."

A sick glimmer of horror flashed in Clint's pale eyes. He jerked his head at Natasha, and his hands gripped the arms of the chair. "Subjects. _Barnes_. Would he be--?"

"It's an option," she said. Her calm oval face revealed no evidence of emotion, washed totally clean. She projected only what she wanted the others to see. In this case, reserve iced over whatever horror might have followed. From her lack of shock, Clint concluded she might have already thought about the possibility. "They need a way to control anyone injected with the nanites or a known quantity to showcase the abilities against. Barnes makes an excellent candidate either way."

Sam's darkening expression was cast into shadow as his head dropped. "They can't improve things that fast. Can they?"

"Ask Tony when he wakes up." Steve rubbed his palm over his elbow. "But our going theory is yes. Programmed to strengthen physical systems or repair damage, the nanites can enhance any subject off the start. Stark Laboratories had functional prototypes that could generate skin to cover burns and repair broken blood vessels, knit bones. The possibilities are beyond my pay grade to explain, but it all boils down to unstoppable warriors delivered in a test tube."

Muttering to himself, Sam discreetly crossed himself, tearing his eyes away from the fuzzy icon of the Winter Soldier on the loose in Russia and the original Captain America facing his successor. The theory of supersoldiers made by nanotechnology sounded implausible, ridiculous. For all they saw together during their missions, underground labs generating fighters programmed to repair gunshot wounds or bruises in battle was new. New and terrifying. Said aloud, the idea became a nightmare.

Swiveling back around to dive into his work again, Clint muttered under his breath. "Spetznaz cybermen special forces, just what the world needed. But Stark still won't make me an EMP arrow."

They continued scrubbing over the data gleaned from clandestine emporia, heads down and movements furtive, as if they expected German police to kick down the door to the safehouse. The atmosphere shivered with fraught anticipation and urgency, ticking against an unknown clock. Precious minutes slipped away while they hunted for evidence and clues.

"Gentlemen, we need to get moving." The redhead put down the coffee cup hard, the loud clunk punctuating her announcement. They turned within the living room to face her, reluctant to leave the dens of files and clandestine materials.

Nat tapped the screen of her tablet and four copies of the notice popped up in front of the team. An orange border blossomed around a plain black screen. The familiar sun wheel took shape in alphanumeric characters, a flat disk surrounded by angular, bent rays. Underneath, four digits glared at them: _11:48._

Sam cut to the chase first, drawing a conclusion as he read the finer type from across the room. "A meeting time?"

"That's what I thought," Natasha said. The screen refreshed and the eight slid off the screen, replaced by a seven. "A countdown timer to the meeting, as far as I can tell. We still don't have a location."

Rubbing his chin, Clint planted his elbow on the counter. "Eleven hours to figure out where a clandestine group funded by Russians and experts at covering up their trails meets. Presumably on Earth. That leaves only six continents, four oceans, and every possible settlement with an Internet connection. I like our odds."

She stretched out her long legs, and her chin came to rest on the bridge of her fingers. "Easy way to find out a location. We buy our way in."  
"We ruled that out, unless you've got some hidden accounts up your sleeve with the Widow's Bite," Clint shot back.

A frigid smile traced her perfectly outlined carmine lips. "And if I do? We're coming down to the wire. I don't think we can afford _not_ to. I can get the money back."  
The prospect of paying terrorists, even for a necessary cause, went a step too far. His stomach clenched. Even for Bucky, he made allowances and cut corners, authorizing the team to delve into corners he rather not know about. Intel from Natasha's sources and some of Clint's 'friends' -- the term used loosely -- provided invaluable leads in the past. But greasing the palms that killed five people a day before was inconceivable.

"Nat…" Steve weakly trailed off.  
They all looked to the rising blond, reaching for his coat. "I'm going to get some air. How about we all regroup in ten minutes and see what we can achieve then. We've been at it too long."

"Is that beer tent still open?" Clint asked as he sprang up to his feet, trailing Sam out the door.

* * *

Steve mopped sweat from his brow with a white, soft towel. Honest exhaustion brightened his cheeks to a warm pink, and he breathed in heavy pants. The last quarter-mile sprint through the leafy Bavarian park briefly pushed away all his grave concerns and the increasing certainty something terrible lay ahead. The team scratched only the surface and came up with enough filth to know the immediate risk to the world, and not much more.

Much as he wanted to leave Tony to sleep off his injuries, he couldn't afford to let that rest stretch out any further. The team needed answers. Once Tony supplied the information they needed, he could decide whether to take a supporting role or accompany them. Set on his course, he trotted up the three flights of stairs into the safehouse.

Natasha sat cross-legged on the landing, looking for all the world like a girl locked out of her apartment. Red wires diverged over her chest, the tiny noise-blocking earbuds almost invisible under her loose, fiery hair. Her grey hood pulled high rendered her slightly more anonymous, letting none of those model good looks emerge too clearly at a distance. Long ago he wondered why any Soviet spymaster would ever choose someone so stark and memorable as their choice for a spy, and promptly discovered the answer from Bucky.

"She embodies a specific means of acquiring _kompromat,_ " he said. "Compromising material."

Steve hadn't understood what Bucky meant then. Oh, he knew the Russian word and the application. How it applied to a bombshell of a ballerina in their company, though, somehow managed to wiggle around his conscious efforts to grasp the subtext. How Bucky laughed.

"Honey trap." Those icy blue eyes glittered in mirth, finding one of those few corners of life unexplored by upstanding, straight-laced Steve Rogers.

Or in delight at how he blushed.

He halted before the top stair and braced himself. She gave him no smile or a signal they were compromised. From the brittle posture of her curved back and stiff shoulders, he half expected her to say she thwarted the sale, at the cost of her beloved Ferrari roadster. Talking to prompt her wasn't necessary. Their long habit allowed for comfortable silences, the kind to compose their thoughts, or the lengthy reprieve as they girded themselves for battle. The taut, dense weight settled over her alluded to the latter.

He didn't rush her.

"Tony's gone."  

The air left his lungs in a rush, a punch to his confidence. Steve reached out for the bannister and grabbed the metal railing. His body swayed against the lactic burn in his calves and thighs. Natasha unfolded herself from the ground, ready to catch him if he falled, maybe the only one in the safehouse who stood a chance.

"When?" He choked on the bitter bile.

She shook her head. "No telling. He went out the window. Second time in as many days."

No point in asking about reconnaissance or monitoring. Tony in his right mind could run circles around any of them, and on a bad day, no telling what he kept stored in his rainy day drawer to wreak havoc. "Did you talk to Happy? Is there anything from Friday?"

"Friday routes all calls to his personal voicemail on the pretext he's still asleep," she said. "Happy has not heard from Mr. Stark since yesterday when he requested an audit. He was plenty unhappy to hear from me."

"The lunatic. What's his game?" Steve needn't have asked. He already knew the answer. They both did when he met her solemn gaze, the face of an angel with the eyes of a devil forged in the charnel pits of the Red Room.

Nat pressed her lips together. "I know where he's going."

It was as close to an admission for her sin, violating his express wishes, as she got. No use in balling her out for it, either. In her supple leather boots, he would have done the same. Anything for a friend. Anything for Bucky.

His head hung low. She eased her arm around his waist, pulling him close, using the step of difference to equalize their height better. "Don't beat yourself up for this."

"Awfully rich of me blaming Tony for doing what he thought was right. I'm biased on the matter of Bucky."

"You are, which is why I don't have a jot of regret making him pay the idiot tax." To the unspoken tune of $400,000. Her embrace steadied Steve and he resisted the urge to sigh, his chin settling atop her head in a rare moment of weakness with no one else left to see. They would both hear Clint and Sam long before the men returned from their beer tent excursion.

Hurt to think Bucky was out there waiting, and not to be the one to rush in. It hurt him more to consider the alternatives. "You know I can't go."

"They won't like it."

"Tell me you'll explain it to them." He made the request as much a question, a lifeline dangling in the dark.  
She recognized the request for permission and nodded, resting her palm against his chest where the white star on his uniform normally sat. "We all signed up for the same mission. You gave us the risks and possibilities in the debrief. The countdown is on, we can't afford to sit around arguing anymore. Tony wasn't willing to sit around either. With any luck we can catch him on the way."

Steve grimaced unseen above her lustrous cherry-dark tresses. "When did anyone last check on him?"  
"Two hours after Sam and Clint got in." She had the answer at the ready, poised along with everything else he might need to know. "A six hour window. He could be having crumpets and tea with a Saudi oil baron for all we know."

A gentle push disengaged her, sending her a step back, far enough for him to take a step up. "Then you better get on your way. I'll send the boys out to meet up with you at the Quinjet." He halted. "And Natasha?"

Full name. That only predicted trouble. Her chin lifted, eyes cool and clear, devastating in their wit and beauty. "Yes, Captain?"  
"Bring them back alive." He needed to say it and needed her to acknowledge that quiet terror with a dip of her head. "Send me the location. I'll man the fort from home. Got a fellow who can get me there lickety-split."  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	7. Turkey

The cool plains spread out before him, shades of beige and tawny, parched browns that Tony vaguely associated with cheap carpet installed in rental apartments. Eroded foothills formed wrinkles in the vast plateau punctuated by the rare dry gulch or dusty town far below. Somewhere in the wilds of Turkey, where ancient empires rose and fall, Truth and Reconciliation arranged a black-market arms auction for exclusive clientele with deep pockets and a taste for caviar and instant obedience. How hackers managed those expectations as skillfully as Sotheby's, but in a desolate corner of the Middle East instead of a posh London townhouse said something about them.

Tony was pretty sure they weren't merely a collective of nationalist hackers fueled by Russian funds. Any doubts he held since Prague were dispelled as he flew south for a rendezvous.

Lonely roads chopped into the landscape stretched far off in either direction, rarely interrupted by a crossroads, let alone a village of any appreciable size. He raced a course south from Lake Van, keeping the flat, dark waters to his left as a general gauge of direction.

"Replay message," he said.

For the fifteenth time, text scrolled across the bottom of his visor. "The animals go marching three by three, the lions carrying the hives of bees, and they all went into the ark to get out of the rain."

A children's song, one he dimly remembered. "The animals go marching four by four, the beauty launched out the door, and they all went out of the ark onto the green mountainside."

The second half missing its chorus came spilling out in Friday's voice, superimposed over the choppy, insubstantial voice quality. Her best efforts to improve it barely gave him a trace of a familiar woman on the other end. Tony knew the name, even though she left him a hint hidden in a children's rhyme.

"Helen launched a thousand ships," he said. "Pretty accurate in this case."

Not for the first time, he regretted disarming the _Iron Legion_ project. Calling up a few dozen droids to scatter around the perimeter and keep out an eye for drones and Range Rovers in a sea of battered vehicles and the occasional repurposed American personnel carrier might have eased his deep-seated anxiety. Possibly not, though.

The armour deflected the wind and kept him insulated against most of the turbulence. Pressure in his chest owed nothing to the arc reactor and entirely to the slow healing wounds from Prague, a lack of proper breakfast, and dark, clammy terror. Somewhere out in the sprawling, dusty plains lay his objective, a meeting he paid good money fair and square to attend.

And unless he missed the mark, he expected Bucky to be closing in. Every crawling black or white vehicle tearing up plumes of dust along the pitiful excuse for a highway drew his attention. He flew too high to make reasonable infrared scans. The best giveaway for Bucky was the lopsided thermal profile on account of his prosthetic arm and the way his body conducted heat hard to the core. Not something a man could perceive from ten thousand feet up.

Too soon to go any lower. Once again, Iron Man played the waiting game.

His coordinates provided by Truth and Reconciliation kindly guided him to a spot deep in the Sirnak province of Turkey, a few kilometers and change from one of the most lawless, volatile regions in the Middle East. He could toss a stone and hit Syrian or Iraqi territory, at least along the invisible borders carved up a century before and disputed ever since. The risk was not lost on him, considering how many self-proclaimed tyrants laid claim to the miserably hot plains and broken villages in recent history.

A peak swept past him as he executed a long bank, frowning to himself. "Noah's Ark. Humour me, Friday. Why would Helen encode part of a nursery rhyme and send it to a SHIELD mailbox? It's not the choice I'd make in her shoes."

The message originated from four hours ago and landed in a monitored box used once before, during Prague. Tony devoured the contents as soon as they arrived. Friday triangulated the message's source to a cell tower near the city of Cizre, conveniently placed a few kilometers away as the crow -- or Iron Man suit -- flew from his rendezvous point with the hacker group outside Silopi.

He figured bees must be his nanites, proof that the doctor heading up his alpha lab remained alive and together with the hacked material. That much left him feeling a bit better, though still deep in a fugue. Helen lived, as of four hours ago. He had trouble imagining her agreeing to help her captors other than by force. Mild and brilliant, the lab director proved herself in the past, forcibly resisting threats until her mind was literally subverted. Out of anyone on his staff, Tony doubted her flipping sides the most.

"We're in proximity to where legend says Noah's Ark landed. She could be providing you her whereabouts or the destination for stolen material. Noah's Ark might be overlooked by guards monitoring her. It's not going to be immediately identified as a message," Friday said.

"A destination,” Tony repeated her. ”Noah's Ark is here? I've heard a dozen Biblical stories and none of them agree on where the boat landed. There must be a whole industry for conspiracy theorists on that. Surprise, surprise. Where did it end up?"

"Depends on which tradition you follow. Most accounts agree on Mount Ararat across from Lake Van. We are moving south away from it."

"She could be transported there. The deal's set to take place near Silopi, though. Damn. That's inconvenient." Tony grumbled to himself. Nothing could be more straightforward than helpful GPS coordinates or a blunt 'send help, I'm abducted' message straight to the US embassy. All these smart scientists and intellectuals thought they were being sly and helpful directing cryptic texts. Almost like Cho was trying to be a spy.  

Friday flipped one of his screens. He stared at a medieval painting, something out of a manuscript, a cartoonishly proportioned man in a green robe holding his hands out to the sky. The rickety building he occupied was as tall as he was, and half the height of the mountain the curved tower stood on.  

“Pretty, but what are you showing me?”

"A possibility," Friday said. "Islamic and early Armenian tradition say the Ark landed on Mount Judi, although Mount Ararat became the most popular story centuries after."

"That gives me two mountains to climb in two different directions. I'm asking for a miracle: why Doctor Cho spent precious seconds sending that particular message instead of 'Crazy men are storing me in an olive oil warehouse in Silopi, armed, send help.' It doesn't make sense," Tony said.

"You'll have to ask her. Range Rover moving at 90 km/h from the east, probably bound from Mosul," she said.

Another prospective candidate for the meeting. He added the note to the list of six possible groups. Multiplied by three, the maximum entourage size, and he had eighteen targets plus however many goons accompanied his Russian-backed hackers. The numbers weren't great, provided he arrived after they assembled. He had no intention of showing up fashionably late.

"Roger. What's Mount Judi? Like Judi Dench, the finest dame in the neighbourhood?"  
Humour lost on the AI. "Jebal Judi, the official name, is a mountain northwest of Silopi." She projected a three-dimensional image onto the screen, revealing a broad mountain lacking any serrated peak like he came to expect. Corrugations and deep gullies eroded the flanks, giving the impression of a discarded pillar dropped on its side. "I found an unpaved road leading up to the base. Given the rough slopes and forests, Mount Judi would make a good hiding place."

"Or a landing site. Not a bad spot for me to put down. How far to the nearest settlement?” he asked.

“About ten kilometers. The mountain is popular as a park. Civilians would be unlikely to visit in large numbers this late into the year.”

“Thank goodness for little blessings.” Tony wished he could rub his hand over his face and deal with the persistent itch above his left eyebrow where the cut scabbed over and needed a layer of cream. For all his brilliant upgrades and technological designs for the Bleeding Edge, he still couldn't devise a way to scratch himself while moving close to Mach 1.

Friday had no answer for his musings, of course. He might have worried more about his propensity to talk to himself, but he needed someone to share his thoughts with. Happy was off the list, along with the rest of the Avengers. The kid in Queens might have some insights, but then Peter would be scaling the walls of the New York Public Library or staying up too late to try and help.

"Should I notify Captain America of your landing site?" Friday asked.

"No. We're still on communications blackout. I don't need the team roaring in and asking why I didn't save them a terrorist to clean up." Tony's brittle nerves left him snappish, and he heard the fading vibrations of his voice rolling around in his helmet.

As he banked south towards the exact coordinates provided by Truth and Reconciliation, he watched the names of geographical features slipping by. Mount Judi took little time to locate, the highest mountain along the rugged area. Drawing a straight line to the east on the map display showed him the spot in a dusty, secluded valley where the T&C hackers hosted their little underworld soiree.

He corrected course and headed for the compound. The guests weren't set to appear for hours at the earliest. His digital invitation provided a set time to arrive with punctual instructions on having weapons and contraband items cleared by security. Much to his bemusement, the terrorists even provided a program of 'pre-auction activities' that included a champagne reception -- or fine coffee, for those disposed not to drink, whomever the poor bastards might be -- and a select viewing of certain goods. His hosts promised to attend to every comfort. How they managed that in a war-torn province disturbed Tony the more he thought about it.

_Where do bloodbaths and performances fit into the schedule?_

The sky overhead darkened as clouds gathered in, driven by a brisk easterly wind. Conditions remained optimal for a quick landing, but he checked the forecast and wasn't pleased to see unsettled conditions ahead. Only one person he knew enjoyed flying through storms, and the veritable Norse god of thunder hadn't been seen on Earth for nearly three years. Before Steve Rogers died to a freak bullet. Before Bucky picked up the shield. Before death gave back Captain America after stealing the other.

 _Not right now. Focus on the task at hand_. The sooner he got back the nanites, then they could all return to their regularly scheduled search for Bucky Barnes, the singularly most difficult target to find anywhere. Elation and terror bubbled away at the back of his mind, barely held in check by the frayed bonds of his mental discipline. He couldn't afford distraction right then and pushed the thought away.

Truth and Reconciliation knew something about Buck, that much he was sure, and he was hellbent on finding out what as he circled around the humble excuse for a manor in the shade of a light scrub forest.

* * *

Defense was clearly on the architect's mind. The walled compound bristled with barbed wire and thick, blocky walls standing ten feet high. A courtyard within featured its own well and a modified flak gun that gave Tony no pleasure to see. His armour lacked immunity to high calibre firearms or rocket-propelled grenades. His gorge rose seeing a BUK missile carrier stored under thick nets, visible to him only thanks to the fine-tuned scans tracking and identifying physical shapes. Despite the scattering of outbuildings clustered around the courtyard above ground, he was certain the better amount of activity happened below in bunkers carved into the sand.

Subterranean meeting halls and chambers presented a much greater challenge to him. Bunker-busting missiles were another degree of firepower above his regulation repulsor blasts, and he preferred not to kill anyone if he didn't absolutely have to. Not that he cared about the lives of black market scumbags much, but without seeing the guest list, he might be halfway to causing an international incident.  

Incidents were expensive and nasty things. Incidents made his lawyers grimace and Steve sigh in the way he imagined schoolteachers prayed for patience and composure.

Scattered pairs of guards circulated around the property. Tony calculated another ten people on the dusty, open road meandering up from Silopi, the small city in the distance. Their presence in battered pickup trucks caused him little concern, other than giving him a sense of any potential mines and IEDs buried in the dormant fields. The spotters armed with radios and cellular phones transmitted reports of vehicles on unprotected bands that he monitored. They hadn't spotted Tony and they were watching for luxury vehicles with their VIPs.

Tony flexed his fists. "All right, showtime. Let's get our game face on."  
Friday shifted into combat settings, calibrations spooling within the mask. His flight speed kicked down a notch as thermal overlays pinpointed every person. Targeting circles popped up, bullseye rounds peppering potential targets within his field of vision. Power diverted from his trimmed vents to the diodes in his gloves, spinning up the repulsors and adding reserve energy.

"Fewest observers detected around the secondary roof next to a breaker box, boss," the AI said. Green lines sprung up around the indicated target and he swept down, losing speed in a sharp arch to prepare for landing.

"Easy in, easy out," Tony murmured.

The whole point of showing up early meant he could deal with the hackers directly. Their agents had precious information about his nanotech program and Bucky. He intended to shake the answers out of them. He dropped in low and made a beeline towards the power supply box on the exterior of the building, near the edge of the wall bordering the facility. Bringing down the system entirely might tip the occupants off but sabotaging a few systems was a nice touch. He detached a magnetic limpet mine from his suit and tossed it at the power box ahead of him. It bounced once off the ground and deflected towards the steel housing of the power supply. Magnets clamped onto the underside of the container with a sharp ping.

 _One remote detonator down, and it's party time._ Tony smirked inwardly.

No sooner was this done than a young man in a long white robe and an incongruous straw Panama hat rounded the corner. He gaped at the glittering figure of red and gold hovering a few feet off the ground. A choked note of alarm escaped his lips, then a bark of alarm. Despite his surprise he grabbed for the submachine gun at his side and swung the barrel towards Iron Man.

Exactly what Tony had been waiting for, as he watched the thermal outlines shuffling around the property.

"Yeah, no," Tony snapped. His palm swung up and a blast of white-hot light scorched a fresh line in the plaster-coated bricks near the guard. The young man instantly dove for cover with a soldier’s panicked reflex. His gun clattered to the ground a few feet away, the barrel a smoking, red-hot mess of slagged steel.

Still flying, he didn't bother to land, circling around the prone young man. The guard looked up, giving Tony a clearer look at his visage. With the fellow’s blue eyes and red-flushed skin, he didn’t blend with his more dark-complexioned companions.  Hell, it stunned Tony anyone so fair-featured would try to crawl out from the shade before nightfall. The man lifted both his hands in obvious surrender.

"Let's get right down to it. You speak English?"

The guard nodded hastily. "Have some."

"Great. You've got something of mine and I'd like it back. You've got a couple crates you're selling. Downstairs?"  
Hesitation lit the pale fellow's face. He retreated a step to the wall, flinching, almost cowering on the spot. Tony’s interrogation was abruptly interrupted by a staccato of gunfire from his left side -- another guard, drawn by the alarm, had jogged over to investigate. Tony raised his palm towards the new guard and hit him in the chest with a broad blast from the repulsor. Not enough to be lethal, but the guard would definitely have a couple of cracked ribs.

Tony looked back to the first guard.

"Downstairs." He hated repeating himself, and he gestured emphatically to make the point. "You can do this the easy way or the hard way." His palm raised in warning, the repulsor lens gleaming balefully in the bright sunshine.  
"Split. They split the goods. Some goods are with Andrei, and Milen has others. I don't know about the rest." The man kept his hands high. His accent sounded Slavic, though without the brusque, cut-glass edges of Russian.

 _Great, two new names_. "Anything they keep on them? Something they never set aside?" Tony landed on the ground and gestured at the man to walk ahead of him, forced along by a push on the shoulder.

"I don't know."

"Think about it. I've got a date tonight, and I really don't need to be delayed."

The man sagged against a door and pawed at the handle. Hot air filtered out when it swung open, poisoned by the taint of diesel. Generators hummed noisily in the background. Tony's mask shifted into scan mode, giving him wireframe outlines of the machines half-buried into the ground.  
"Down there, they have tunnels. Access points to the main room. I am not allowed to go there, they make me stay up here and watch." The pale-faced guard pointed at a manhole cover set behind a mess of plastic pipes and cables.

Tony seized him by the collar, hauling him up. The white robe flapped and he saw dirty boots underneath, dark trousers stained by the everpresent dust. "Don't mess with me, kid. You think I believe that? Try a little harder next time. Your hair is practically white, you've got a Bulgarian accent, and..."

The sleeve ripped away easily. Underneath, the pretense of a dress shirt rolled up to his sleeves, revealing a sun wheel tattooed on the man's wrist in black ink. Metal fingers clamped around the man's forearm hauled the limb up, and light flared in the eye sockets of the mask.

The guard kicked at Tony reflexively. His face instantly contorted in pain and whimpering, he nursed his injured leg close to his body. Stupid move -- not the first time someone pulled it. Tony pinned the hacker to the wall with both hands.

"Let me go," the young man hissed.

"You've got something you're not supposed to have. Aside from your entitlement complex: _my_ goods. I'll give you five seconds to tell me where they are before I get mad."

"Fuck you. Too late. It's--"

Red in the face and puffing, his victim twisted and kicked, trying to find a handhold. His grip on the smooth metallic plates did little, sliding off every time. Tony gave him a good shake and lifted him higher until the toes of his boots scraped on the dusty concrete. Sand kicked up in little puffs.

Tony's mouth stretched tight and he glared through the mask. Stupid punk was probably twenty-five and change, high on rubles flowing into his bank account. He didn't have a clue. Or maybe he did, fed lies and slanted truths. "Manners. You know, they're hard to find."  
The man spat in his face. Thanks to the mask, that was hardly an issue, but Tony forced himself to inhale through clenched teeth. "Got it, now I'm mad."

He dragged along the pale man until he found an unoccupied washroom in the hallway and shoved him inside. The hacker swore and cursed in Bulgarian as Tony yanked the door closed and melted the handle to slag. "Be glad I didn't wash your mouth out with soap,” Tony called through the door.

The day wasn't improving any, and the champagne social seemed an unlikely antidote. He wasn't happy about being confined to the ground level while sweeping the rooms. The compound was oddly still and hot. This was always Bucky and Natasha's territory, where they thrived happily while he took to the skies. Punching through walls and tossing chairs at unsuspecting terrorists fit their bill, especially when it came to hand to hand combat.

He could function in that role if he had to, though. And he did, ducking behind a bank of metal footlockers after his throw blew out a monitor by putting a steel chair leg through hit and knocking some skinny fellow in an absurdly expensive suit to the ground.

Suit-guy shouted in alarm. Tony sprinted past him, pouring on speed and shoulder-checking his way through a pair of closed doors. He blitzed through a plexiglass sheet and knocked three server racks over with a squeal of metal and tangled wires. There was another crash of breaking glass nearby as flashing lights blinked warnings around Tony.

 _Stark Technologies_ branded the nearest plastic crate, peeking out through the skewed motherboards and servers warped off their racks. Tony rose with his palms out and prepared to fire when an older man with a salt-and-pepper crewcut lunged from behind cover. At point-blank range, he emptied his handgun’s magazine into Tony’s chest.  

Purple bruises would be on the menu for tomorrow. Tony’s dented armor slowly reformed as mangled bullets fell harmless to the ground. There were more footsteps -- backup on the way. Suit-Guy and his friends rushed down the hallway. Tony jetted six feet towards the ceiling to avoid a young, athletic man with a professional mien from bashing his knee in with a heavy piece of rebar. The older man dug a magazine from his belt and quickly reloaded with practiced motions.

The athletic guard didn't say a word, but ducked for cover while the older soldier shot at him. Tony detonated a charge of dazzling light that blinded the retinas, though his mask transitioned opaque at the last moment to spare his sight. While they both cursed and felt their way, he rocketed to the corner doorway and stepped into a small, refrigerated room full of vials and fridges marked by biohazard stickers.

Under the best circumstances, a prompt run by Friday would have sent the rogue nanites to his side. He had implanted a ‘come to daddy’ command early on, and he executed it immediately.  
This wasn't the best of circumstances. Nothing happened. He ground his teeth. An explosion rocked the room and staved in the roof, sending Tony to his knees with his arms over his head. Dust rained down around him, and something heavy bounced off his back. _Fine, time for the exit plan._

Tony seized the largest fridge, a boxy metal device barely three feet tall, and burst out into the open air through a hail of gunfire.

Screaming lights erupted and Tony ignited countermeasures, a glittering fan of tiny missiles racing in all directions. Friday deployed another scintillating beam to knock out the men firing on him, attracted by the noise or a radioed warning. The burners in his boots kicked on and sent him soaring up into the air, far enough he gained a view of the men tucked behind corners and walls shooting at him.

"Dammit. Friday, knock out the truck. That should scatter them while I see--"

He ripped off the door of the fridge and hurled it at one militiaman foolish enough to stand up. He was no Bucky or Steve, but having seen them in practice, Tony offered a fair approximation. He couldn’t suppress a grin, though, watching the wobbling door smack a militiaman in the face and knock him squarely on his ass.

There was no time to inspect the fridge’s contents otherwise. A quick skim through the vials and jars while under the trees would give him time to see what the cyber terrorists had. The nanites functioned best in a cold temperature suspension in the lab, and he had no reason to believe that Truth and Reconciliation hackers would change their storage.

He made a beeline for the field of ragged greenery fringing the base of the mountains. Mount Judi looked like a solid place to hide, the rough terrain providing ample cover. The guards at the compound had no road to drive up. They needed hours to scale the hiking paths, and Tony knew he could reach outcroppings even seasoned climbers needed time to reach. Time, that was the key, to determine if he had the nanites and then to round up a few sources.

Soaring as close as he dared to the treetops as the terrain shifted from scrub brush to spare woodland, he zigzagged. Targets flashed onscreen beside him and he ignored them, practically tasting the resins of the forest on his tongue. He heard an alarming beep, and all hell broke loose. Gold and red sparks erupted as he spun, deploying a blast one-handed from his glove. The other clutched the fridge close. He didn't care if the nanites were incinerated, though his concern for his own well-being was significantly higher. Fire wouldn't permanently destroy his armour.

The sizzling beam shot down whatever pursued him mid-air, and he plunged for the treetops. Splinters of wood burst from the trunks in a hail of fire. Streaks of flame smashed into the ground, leaving craters in the dust, spraying dirt everywhere. Explosions erupted among the trees, shrapnel cutting chunks out of his suit that the robots blended together to correct. Tony swore inwardly.

 _This is exactly how not to run a mission. It better be salvageable. I can take cover, check on the nanites. After that, walk in the park._  
A blip rippled over his visor and the projections shuddered. Tony rolled and dived, smashing through a few smaller branches rather than negotiating more carefully around them. It was at the last possible second that Friday screamed an alarm in his HUD, prompting Tony to reflexively jerk and dive out of the way of an AT-3 antitank rocket hot on his heels. The contrail rattled his teeth as the missile shot past him.

"Little warning next time!"  
"Bogeys at one hundred meters and closing," she said.

The first missile roared past and struck a heavy old tree trunk. The explosion pulverized the tree in a spray of burning wood chips and knocked several other trees near it to the ground.

The second anti-tank missile leapt after Tony, as sure as a hunting wolf chasing elusive prey.

"Incoming. Boss, I can't shake them."

"Countermeasures!"

Tony dropped the heavy fridge into a gulley and aimed his face skywards, pouring every effort into speed and altitude. The shuddering thrust made his teeth chatter and he bit back a pained gasp from the sheer acceleration his battered body endured. A flare of plasma in his wake incinerated the missile hot on his heels.

Two down. But not all. A quartet of spiralling missiles roared out through the oily slick of smoke forming a pillar as tall as the mountain. Tony abruptly spun and one of the projectiles screamed past him. Tracers shedding white-hot magnesium trails flashed and burst in mesmerizing blizzard. He couldn't tell up from down. Stars burned in front of his eyes, whiting out the shapes of the trees.

Something immense slammed into his chest with the force of a freight train. He had a moment of breathless terror. His limbs flailed as his momentum ceased. A moment seemed to last for eternity. Swaddled in the blue haze of silence, he caught sight of a bird on the wing through sparkling embers raining down. As he blinked, he swore he saw a tall shape emerging from the dark, oily smoke engulfing the forest. Tony’s lips moved, but no sound came out. The ringing in his head drowned out any warnings that shook the armour with their force.  
He couldn't name what -- or who -- he saw as he tilted and dipped. He only glanced the long barrel of a gun as he wheeled in a drunken spin.

Dark forests rose to meet him. The mountain swerved out of sight. He reached out a hand in desperation for any kind of handhold to slow his fall, his fingers numb. Patches of skin showed through the eroded golden seams that linked patches of blackened armour, holes that knit back together before his eyes. Tony gagged for breath he couldn't pull in.

Two years ago had been much the same. Iron Man punched out of the sky by high-calibre rounds, forced into a retreat while Captain America fought for his life against overwhelming odds. Not like this, not again.

This time Tony couldn't hear the familiar pulsing of the Quinjet's engines or the staccato crack of Nat's pistols. Past and present overlapped in his overwhelmed mind. He shouted in defiance like he had then, but not a sound passed his lips.

_No, not like this. Hold on, I'm almost there. Bucky, keep fighting, don't let them take you…_

He fell from the sky through swirling wisps of grey smoke and plumes of the burning trees, deadweight cast back to earth by a pitiless hand.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	8. Silopi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers pursue Tony and discover smoke, hellfire, and brimstone around the black-market meeting site.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enter Steven Rogers, narrator, stage left.

Seated in the front of the Quinjet, Natasha pressed the headset to her ear, hand cupped over the shell. "Come on, Tony. Pick up, pick up, pick up," she trilled in a singsong.

Clint placed his hands firmly on the yoke to keep the plane from bucking against the updrafts. He side-eyed her. The redhead never sang on a mission. Her uncharacteristic behaviour could be a show of nerves, but he didn't like that any better.

"Anything?" Steve asked. He held onto a bulkhead, feet planted apart to compensate for the odd rattle or sway. Already suited up, his shield rested in its cradle on his back. The helmet tipped back against his nape, revealing the concern worn into his face.

Beside the blond, Sam pulled his goggles into a more comfortable position. "Give her a minute, it's not like comms are great up here."

Steve shot a worried look. "When has Stark ever had a problem with answering a message? Can't his relays work underwater?"  
"And in low earth orbit, supposedly, but that's beside the point." The pilot rested his hand on Steve's arm. "He might have be sitting in the middle of a business meeting right now. Answering Captain America in front of arms dealers and an oligarch would be fairly awkward."

"I don't like it. This kind of radio silence, it's not like him."  
Natasha lifted her blue eyes from the horizon line and shot a look back over the rounded line of her shoulder at the two men seated behind her. "That's a sliding scale where he is involved. Running off without us to intercept hackers in the desert isn't exactly Tony's speed either."

With a sigh, Sam tugged at his flight harness. The buckles and mesh bands cut into his shirt. He strained forward to listen to any chatter out of her headset. "Do we trust him to get the job done or are we second guessing his judgment by leaping in? That could bungle things up."  
"Radio silence going on two hours isn't much better. Something is off," Steve said.

"I'm with Cap. Stark went in hot and he's not the type to sit around idle. If he went quiet, something went wrong." A bounce that went through the ship knocked her back into her seat. She deftly slid the headset back over her fiery curls. "Come on, Tony. Knock knock."

Beside her, Clint gritted his teeth. He tried to steer around the turbulence while keeping to the clouds. "How many times you tried?"

"Probably twenty," she said.

"In the last hour?" Steve gripped the bulkhead tighter. He rode out the thumps and dips like a surfer on a wave, calm as he ever was.

Her smile creased her face, doing nothing to warm those deep, unreadable eyes. "Fifteen minutes."

Sam's eyebrows lifted an inch and he grimaced. "Remind me never to show up late." He palmed the back of his head. "You probably got routed automatically to voicemail pulling a stunt like that. Anyone else got a phone?"

A gap in the clouds revealed the seared brown terrain intercepted by a sinuous river. Clint shot ahead, following the rising elevation to the east. He flipped a switch and checked the coordinates. Numerals superimposed on the HUD picked out landmarks that he ignored. "Not funny, Wilson. Steve, I'm not getting any kind of reading for a beacon, either. He didn't think to leave us a backdoor."

"That would have been a nice thought." The news Steve took in stride, nodding, as though it confirmed what he expected. His hands went to his discarded helmet, pulling the tight sleeve over his head.

While he finished gearing up, the redheaded spy tossed aside the headset. Her thumb slid down the line of her leg holster, checking the position of a machine pistol. The glanced aside to see Sam lacing up his boots. They were all preparing for the inevitable.

The weather gods assented to the team's decision. Sunlight spilled along the grey, misty clouds and the Quinjet emerged from the thick cumulus bank. Clint steered a straight course and muttered under his breath. "Double check the coordinates."

"They're not perfect. The best I could get on short notice," Nat said. She flipped on the phone mounted to a plastic bracket in blatant violation of FAA regulations. Several numbers scrolled across the screen. A quick check matched them up to the heading displayed on the map. "One and the same."  
"I was afraid of that." The archer stiffened in the captain's seat, his feet braced flat against the ground. "Cap, you better get strapped in. This ain't pretty."

In two swift strides, Steve pushed his way between their chairs. He ignored the advice, clamping his fist around a metal loop on the frame. His arm wrapped around the headrest of Natasha's chair. "Tell me what you've got."

He need not have asked. He found the scarred black wounds on the dusty earth, radiating lines proof of impact and incineration. Explosives, big ones. Fiery plumes rose off the taller trees in a patch of forest south of a long, high ridge. Smoke hung in thick black clouds, trailing off with the breeze. Blackened husks lay around a facility in various stages of disrepair.  
Natasha pointed at the orange crosshairs blinking over a flaming building. "That's his target. The hackers arranged for their buyers to show up there."

"One hell of a sting operation if they invited everyone to blow them up." Sam forced himself to swallow back a hiss. He yanked his goggles down.

Speed trimmed from the Quinjet gave the team an opportunity to take in the scope of the damage. A burnout pickup truck lay a hundred meters from the walls, the passenger door hanging open. Debris littered a path back to a gaping hole in the wall, rubble scattered around another impact point. Steve quickly read the terrain and frowned. "See, the attack began inside. Those explosions form a trail headed for the forest. A pursuit."

"Someone was on the run. Could be Stark," Clint said. "Could be a target."

Sam squinted through the pale ruby tint of the lenses. "Spent an awful lot of firepower for one hacker. Let's assume hostiles."

They circled above the oily plume of smoke and ran west along the mountain, using its rocky bulk for cover. The long, oval loop pointed the Quinjet around at the burning complex. Clint looked over his shoulder. "Should I put her down there?"

"Cut south. If anyone made their escape, they've got only one way overland in a vehicle." Steve retreated from the deck, his boots tramping a dense knell over the plating. Squeezing past Sam, he headed for the last seat. "Buckle in. They might have friends."

Tension gripped the team when the full scope of the destruction unfolded below. The hollow charred shell of a building smoldered in grey wisps. Faded plumes traced wild arcs in the air, not fully blown apart by the wind. A body lay in the courtyard unmoving, another pair fallen in a field to the south.

A chime rattled through their brittle silence. Clint snapped to attention and glared at the indistinct figures. "Seriously? You're shooting at us?"  
Natasha's fingers calibrated the energy weapons, charging them up. "Get us a clear spot to put down. Someone shooting means someone alive."

"Sure isn't going to be Tony. His kind of pissed means blasting at us." A toothy smile carved the archer's expression into rigid, leering lines. He kept the jet steady as another bullet widely missed their wingtip.  
The rocket-propelled grenade got a whole lot closer, and Natasha swore. As Clint registered the attack, he started to pull up sharply.

"Give me cover!" Steve shouted.  
"What do you mean give you cover?" Sam seized the headrest and torqued himself around as far as he could go. "Cap, what are you doing? For once could we not go jumping headfirst into trouble?"

Another buzzer howled through the ship, followed abruptly by the shudder of the deck dropping out of the back. The wind shrieked behind them.

Steve never waited for landings. The serum that rendered him nearly indestructible also enhanced his willingness to leap out of planes without a moment's notice. The hatch gaped open while Sam pulled his harness, mouth stretched in a shout. Wind robbed the warning from him. It would have done not a lick of good, either way.

The hastily retreating blue form shrank below the shelter of the jet. They had no choice but to cut south. Multiple pings marked on the craft's radar, and Clint shot a tense look to the wing. "Did he have to do that?"

"Looks like Steve's going to have the first dance," Natasha said, tightening the belt around her waist and checking her the Widow's Bite at her cuffs. Until Clint put the jet down, she was restricted to gearing up or grabbing a parachute. As it was, they descended fast enough to make a parachute unnecessary.

"And here I thought I was his special plus one." Sam wrestled with the webbing holding him fast to the seat. His flight pack hung within arm's reach, and the sight of Captain America in freefall awoke an atavistic need to dive after him.

Making a face, Clint threaded a deadly route through rapid small arms fire. "Hold your damn horses. You go jumping out there and you'll get nothing more than a couple dozen holes in your precious wings."

Buckles unfastened and hung slack. Sam sprung up and practically threw himself into the embrace of the flight pack. Straps wound around his arms and he fastened the belt in rough, jerky motions. "I'm not letting him take fire because you wanted to take the scenic route, Barton."

The moment he pulled free with the pack, he edged his way to the dropped plank. Clint made a sound of exasperation as Sam threw himself into the wind.

"What are they going to do if we cut and run for Dubai?" he said.

"That better be a rhetorical question."

"At least consider having a holiday. When was the last time you got one?" Clint tried to tempt her by grinning and winking, though he hardly dared to pull his eyes away from the site below for long.

Natasha refused to acknowledge the offer. Her eyes darted over the screen and she stabbed a finger. "Off your six, you've got a sniper hunkered down. Get him running or the boys aren't going to be landing."

"On it," he said, flipping another switch and sending a stream of bullets rattling at the target. The red dot burst into frantic movement, scared out of the protected hole. "Wait, what do you mean me?"

She was already unlatching from her seat, aiming for the parachutes stowed in the back. "They need me on the ground more than you do up here."

"Says who? I've got idiots firing at us."

"You can handle them. I looked at the profile and the temperature balance is off. That's Barnes, I'm sure of it." Natasha grimaced as she hauled on the backpack, snapping the buckles into place. "And Sam's not responding."

* * *

Steve's parachute snapped open, a pale smudge against the sky. Camouflage was out of the question, but the Quinjet breaking out of the clouds demolished any chance of stealth. The rapid descent provided time to structure a plan in his head as he took in the wreckage of the walled compound spread before him. Burn marks blossomed along the pock-riddled exterior. Smoldering vehicles and fallen trees littered the fringes beyond the property, and he made out the plume of a retreating car headed south.

His landing went harder than he liked, but he shook free of the parachute and left the nylon draped behind him, a memorial to the rutted ground. Smoke still rose in a thin haze, burning his nose and leaving his eyes narrowed to compensate for the sting. At a jog, he pulled off the shield and went straight for the high wall.

No signs of the visitors remained except a spent magazine, a slumped briefcase in the dust. Discarded papers thrown across the ground rustled on the wind, pricking his senses. From the ruts, they left in a hurry. He swept a look along the ramparts for any guards tucked away, taking aim at a plenty obvious target, finding none. His approach might have alerted spotters, and they weren't firing, which gave him a faintly queasy sensation.

Tony wasn't here. Were he, the natural response for any defenders would be to neutralize Steve, pin him down before he gained access to the buildings. He leapt straight for the wall and jammed his fingers into a groove, using the narrow ledge to haul himself up. Not the most graceful approach but effective, as he forced himself to the top. Glass and toothed metal dragged over his uniform, pulling a few threads free, but otherwise doing little damage. He landed flat, hunkering low for a few moments.

Spent casings littered the ground. He found a lonely pin, a spatter of blood. No movement caught the periphery of his vision, so he slid forward. In the dull light, a chunk of red enamel glinted hot as blood. Such a small piece to hold in his hand, but he immediately recognized the paint and the weight. Tony's armour.

The courtyard remained eerily silent, another nail in the coffin. _You're too late_. Every silent doorway and dying ember mocked him.

The pull of the dark thoughts was strong. Steve pushed away the unwelcome influence. As long as Tony's body didn't lie in the dust, he wasn't too late. He crept around the perimeter, alert for signs of activity. He cleared nearly two-thirds of the periphery before he found it.

Two men squeezed their way out of the ground. A subterranean exit concealed by scrub and a crumbling wall jutting out from the soil. He only spotted them thanks to his elevated position, and even so, the captain found it hard to see the pair thanks to their desert-hued clothes. One packed an AR-15 over his shoulder, a fresh magazine jammed into his belt. His fatigues and wary regard gave him away as military or a guard, at least. The other man raised a hand to his brow, shading his dark face. He slid a blocky plastic case into a backpack and swung it over his shoulders.

Steve didn't need to see the _Stark Industries_ logo stenciled on the grey case to know exactly what he looked at. The glimpse of a matte black device was promising, too, possibly a tablet. Nat would find that information useful, and the late departure of the pair gave him a clear set of targets.

He watched the darker-skinned man with the backpack inch ahead, and the man with the gun provide cover as they picked out a path involving as much cover as possible. Past the compound, they had few choices other than risk going on foot or running for the woods. The latter seemed the most likely and Steve gripped the shield. The gun posed the immediate problem.

Creeping to the closest corner, he drew up and flung the shield hard enough to knock the gunman off his feet. He landed hard in the dust, clipped below the knees. Unable to break his fall, the gunman went down and snarled a command. "Run."

The gunman and the guard split in two directions, the guard bolting for the nearest tall building. Steve marked the presence of a scorched motorcycle, perfectly outlined in black, its tires a melted wreck. Springing off the wall, he plunged after the gunman and gave him two swift punches. The gunman got his arm up fast enough to deflect the first, but not the second, which threw him back in the dirt.

"Where's Iron Man?" Steve asked.  
The man spat out a bloody wad. He whipped up the gun and Steve slapped it wide, a fan of bullets shot into the wall and the grass. Accurate shots. The gunman was a soldier by his reckoning. Ripping the AR-15 from the gunman's hand wasn't hard, and Steve twisted the barrel, warping the screaming metal, casting it aside. "I'll ask you again," he said, closing in, reaching for the man's collar. "I know he was here. Where is he?"

"Dead," the rattled soldier said. His clipped, short answer tripped hard off his chattering teeth.

Smoke swirled around him. Time was of the essence. "Then where was the body taken?"

The soldier gave him a blank, cold stare. "Tossed in the Tigris River. Too late. No one likes--"

A stifled grunt escaped him and Steve jerked back, the impact force ripping through his arms. He dropped to one knee, dragging himself and the soldier back behind a wall. It didn't make a lick of difference. He carried a corpse thanks to a neat bullet hole in the side of the foreigner's head. Dropping the deadweight, he sank low. His shield was within reach beyond the wall, lying flat.

But there was a sniper to contend with and he needed some kind of aid. His commlink crackled to life with a tap. "Barton, give me some cover. Due southwest, run a line up there for me. There's a sniper."

"On it," Clint called back through the link. "We've been pinning down three targets for the past five minutes."

"Great. Can…" The link dropped out. Steve grimaced.

The Quinjet's engines pulsed a soft, odd note high overhead, the opening roar to a barrage of gunfire on a flyby. Huge clods of earth burst into the air. Rounds pinged into metal and clay bricks. Steve dashed out and seized the blue and red shield, never so glad to feel its familiar, friendly weight on his arm. Instinct told him to drop and he flattened.

A shape fueled by a tail of fire and smoke shrieked over him. The rocket propelled grenade shrieked loud as a banshee from the direction of the sniper's bullets. It slammed into the ground and threw him forward onto his belly. At the end of its trajectory, it slammed into a pickup truck, engulfing the vehicle in smoke and flames.

For a moment he looked up past broken buildings to see a looming shape dashing over rooftops and dropping out of sight. He needn't have anyone tell him who it was. Steve sketched the lines of Bucky Barnes' face and body often enough to have them nearly memorized. He clenched his fists and forced himself up.

Bucky was there, armed and ready. Shooting at him? The possibility was there, but then he watched the darker Turkish man bolt from not far behind him.

"I've got eyes on Barnes and a target leaving the compound," he hissed into the microphone buried in his uniform, already moving, dragged into action.

"Closing from the west. I've got Barnes," Natasha said over the link.

"Negative. He is moving, and I can catch him. Wait, runner is on the move."  

Seeing the blond captain, the guard broke from cover behind the burnt out garage. The cluster of outbuilding screened him from view. He wasn't much past twenty-five, if that, his dark skin glistening with perspiration. Wide eyes tracked furtively back and forth.  Steve made out his dull silhouette, enveloped in khaki pants and a brown t-shirt. A backpack thumped on the guard's shoulders. Lean, muscular lines of body practically thrummed as he sprinted.

"Stop!"

Maybe there was no point in calling out. Bucky certainly never thought so. Steve had to try. Could be the Turkish man didn't know he meant no harm or mistook the blond soldier for an enemy. His plea fell on deaf ears as it so often did. One day, just once, he would shout and his quarry would gladly throw their hands up and learn he meant well.

Steve dropped down from the wall, landing in a crouch and lunging forward in a sinuous motion. His boots slid across broken tiles and shards of brick, slowing him as he fought for balance. Only a little, but it counted.

"Get him, Nat. Don't shoot him!" Steve needed to pin down the Turkish guard, freeing him to pursue Bucky.

A broken crackle jumbled her response to incomprehensible levels. He couldn't know if she agreed or not.

The guard pounded for the broken, cracked road, never looking back. His single-minded focus lay ahead, in stretching the distance separating them. He broke through the outer wall ringing the facility, planting his hand on a rough barrier at waist-height. Kicking his legs over, he leapt the distance and came down running.

The jagged walls formed a solid barrier broken only in three places. A battered metal roll-down gate blocked the nearest entrance. Steve swung his shield in front of him, forearm braced against his stomach. His rush smashed into the center of the gate, malforming the hinges and ripping the pins out of the clay frame. The door landed with a smash. His foot planted it flat as he angled in to take the Turkish man down.

The shrill metallic collision of the door to the ground spurred the guard faster. Puffs of smoke and dirt spilled behind him. He kicked up to a sprint through the dusty earth, dodging behind a power pole and a thin screen of fencing that forced Steve to parallel him, ready to jump over the string of barbed wire.

The guard's lead was short, but enough that Steve pumped his arms and swung around a low wall that reared out of the dirt. Vaulting over a crater punched into the dirt in the earlier fight, he poured on the speed, adrenaline coursing through his veins. He couldn't afford to let a witness to the damage escape. He had to know what happened and Tony's whereabouts.

The wrecked facility rapidly disappeared behind him, and the chase on the ground brought into focus details he hadn't seen from fifteen thousand feet up. Lightly forested terrain soon turned rugged within a few hundred meters of the road, which turned west. Shorn fields gave way to some kind of building site swept over by dust, the incomplete structures and disused machinery creating odd industrial shapes in the distance. He wasn't sure what the original purpose was, but several scattered vehicles parked behind the chain-link fences looked too new to belong there. They could be from the black-market meeting or brought by an unfriendly force. Only one way to know.  
Steve knew he couldn't let the guard make one of the cars or a truck. Chances were they were functional; worse, he could arm himself and fire with near impunity. Serum or not, he wasn't chasing down a car going ninety klicks all the way to the city of Cizre or the Iraqi border.

He decided then to try and cut into his quarry's path, as running into him at an angle seemed the safest bet. An abandoned truck lay between the facility and the road, its driver long gone. Dashing over the rutted field, the blond soldier took on a tight, efficient lope, a hunting wolf ready to close the distance.

The guard raced for a burnt-out truck, his steady, smooth pace unyielding. One time the Turkish man shot a look over his shoulder, catching sight of Steve headed in for him. Lips peeled back into a rictus snarl, teeth white in his dark face, flushed cheeks showing exertion. He should have slowed or stumbled. Keeping the pace was difficult enough, and the sick realization that the man must be enhanced thickened when Steve watched him leap over a dry canal.

 _I had to pick the all-star marathoner to chase, didn't I?_ The blink of surprise whirled around in Steve's mind and faded. He had no time to entertain concern. Time for him to consider the situation after he brought the man down. All that existed was that target, the bouncing backpack tucked tight to the Turkish guard's shoulders. They had to be Tony's nanites, and maybe even the application or program controlling them.

Scrubby woods opened beyond the field and the guard clearly thought to lose him in the greenery. The husk of a burnt vehicle lay in the way, and the guard pounded flat out for it, not quite closing within a dozen paces when a dark spectre raced out to intercept him. Steve's breath stuttered in his chest, his eyes involuntarily widening as recognition slammed home.

Bucky.

The brown-haired assassin covered the distance a shade faster as Steve hesitated, and that gave him a chance to slam into the guard. Twisting his metal arm around the shorter, slimmer man, Bucky tore the backpack free. In a few seconds they were separated, the Turk sent on his way with a shove. Two valid targets and the decision wasn't one Steve made consciously, shifting to follow Bucky's path.

"Buck, stop!" For the second time, the blond captain's shout did nothing. His heart ached. Pride crumpled. There, for the first time in years, his best friend and brother in all but name fled into the Turkish wilds.

Tony was lost to an unknown fate, but surely Bucky would know something. Why else would he be here?

Bucky did something Steve totally didn't expect. At the last minute, the soldier leapt through the yawning doors of the burnt-out pickup truck, feet forward. His boots crashed onto the ground and he slid back into a frantic run. Not much ahead, but enough to keep his lead.

Light and shadows melted together, the ground concealed behind low shrubs. They tore at the Bucky's pants, whipping his shins as he flew over the uneven terrain. The other guard fled for the trees further beyond, soon vanishing into the patchwork foliage.

Steve simply dodged around the burnt truck, reaching back to secure the shield. Magnets on his harness snapped it into place. He bashed aside a few acacia branches on his vambrace, sending leaves flying. The angle he cut in on gave him a lead on his best friend, until he felt the wire.

A snapped steel line cut into his boots. The two trees flanking his imaginary path shuddered.

"Tripwire, the place is mined!" he shouted into his comlink. Someone might hear. Steve reflexively threw his arms in front of his face and leapt. Momentum carried him into bushes and he grabbed the shield, turtling beneath the protective vibranium.

Another explosion rocked the defiled the stillness of the woods. Shards of bark, branch, and metal flung into the air embedded themselves in shaking trees. Hail dappled Steve's shield as the heat and blowback knocked him forward. Tightly rolling, his knees pressed to his chest and arm tight to the shield, his shoulder struck a rock. The force jarred him up.

But for a nasty shred in his uniform, Steve remained in one piece, the serum doing its miracle work keeping the pain in check. He bounced up onto his feet and tilted his head, getting his bearings.

A rustle gave all he needed to know for a direction. If he wasn't running down Bucky, he still had a chance at the guard. Wherever Natasha was, he had to trust she or Sam were tracking the other significant target. He ran, bursting through the smoldering undergrowth. His path took him straight to another stretch of fencing.

"Seriously?" Who put a fence in the middle of a Turkish woodland? Rolling his shoulders, he broke to a full out run and jumped, legs outstretched and high like a long ago drill sergeant taught him at Camp Lehigh.

 _Head up, legs high, joints loose. You're gonna clear that wire or end upside down, tangled up, a sitting duck for Nazis to shoot!_ The man's voice rippled in his thoughts as he hit the ground lightly for his size.

"Barton, I've got Bucky in flight," he said. Maybe something might go through, received by the Quinjet on a solid transmission. He got no satisfaction in the operational silence, and had barely enough breath to share. "Put that bird down, give me somewhere to run him."

Up ahead, a spur of the road curved close to the trees. The asphalt provided better traction and no coverage. But Steve still couldn't see the other super soldier. Beyond the road's soft shoulder, a quarry baked white in the dusty afternoon. The structures he had trouble identifying earlier reared up before him. Concrete pipes and blasted uprights stuck out of the earth, broken fingers grabbing at the turbulent sky. Another chain-link fence rimmed the property, twisted by the wind to metallic snarls that might rip at anything that went by.

Steve raced through the thin vegetation scorched to charcoal by missiles and fire that destroyed the facility beyond the woods. The clear road meant Bucky must be in the building site rather than driving hell for leather to the nearest city. A significant portion of him hoped that Barnes worked with him, pursuing the Turkish guard.

He slowed a little as he broke into the building site, taking in the angles and cover points for a tactical mental map.

Time was of the essence. He wrapped the torn straps around his harness, sheltered against his back. He whispered into his commlink, "Clint?"

Silence answered. He tried again, repeating Sam's name and Natasha's, but no one responded but the sigh of the wind. The building site was safer there than in the open, and that was a risk Steve couldn't avoid. Buck was out there and needed him. He needed Bucky to recover Tony.

The silence prickled his senses. Too often the quiet signalled trouble. Ducked down, he crept through the smoky air, slinking low. Burning debris lay in scattered clots that he gave a wide berth, looking for the shadowy form of Bucky Barnes or any of the guards. They were still out there. Bucky still had the backpack and avoided him. Could it be Bucky didn't know what he had? Could it be Bucky didn’t know they were working on the same goal?  
The idea just didn't compute. Tired and heartsick, Steve knew he needed to make it back to the team. If the commlinks were down, something might be wrong with Friday again. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, darting through the buildings.

He hadn't calculated on the punch.

Bucky collided with him as he dashed over the quarry, the super soldier using the cover of shadows and scaffolding to his advantage against Steve. The blow knocked them both flat. Those ruthless metal fingers carved a path to his throat. Steve got both hands around the scaled forearm. He tried to wrench the leering soldier sideways.

They both struggled, feet scraping into the dirt, flipped over and pinned back. Steve arched off the ground, lurching to get to his feet again. Bucky drove him down, his arm strained and body shaking at the needed force. He ducked his head, drawing close to the blond captain.

"What are you doing? Don't you remember me?" Steve asked through gritted teeth.

Maybe it was a blessing Tony couldn't see this. The man looming over him wasn't Bucky but something closer to the Winter Soldier.

"I promised you, Stevie," Bucky snarled.

"Buck?"

"I'd be with you until the end of the line." That cool, controlled voice radiated above him.

It struck a note of deep, impossible horror. He couldn't think. Steve jerked as hard as he could away from those cold fingers slamming into his throat, breaking through the wavering in his armour. His head smacked into the ground, and he surged up against those punishing digits crushing his windpipe.

Bucky leaned over him, searching his face.

"Friday," Steve gasped out with his last breaths. "This bastard is trying to kill me."

The soldier squeezed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	9. Living By the Sword

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the fight is Captain versus Captain, no one wins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [Living By The Sword](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcjpKh9M5Gw) by Peter Roe. Thank you for following along so far!

The blow drove him against the ground, but the mental shock left him shaking much longer. Bucky lived.

Steve awoke from the white threshold of death into a world that believed him deceased. After emerging from the ice, the second rebirth felt almost quaint, more like a comfortable sleep. A bullet ended his plans of a quiet retirement, maybe traveling the country on his motorcycle. Restored to life, that shot taunted him. Once a soldier, always a soldier. Apparently not even an honourable discharge into the grave was allowed to interrupt his tenure as Captain America.

Receiving the shield almost sent him into a fugue. A time that tried a man's soul, he could not shrink from the service to his country. No. He was serving a memory, the shield a consolation for the better man filling his boots. Blood stained the heart of the conflict without an end, the heart's blood of his best friend and his own life.

Beyond comprehension of the forces at work, he stared up into that familiar face of Bucky Barnes. From a look, he could hardly identify what the man was thinking. Did he recognize Steve? Was this battle rage or a dark influence provoked from the rattling Soviet cage of experimentation?

They fought once. He beat Bucky nearly to a standstill. Berlin. DC. New York. Not something he could do again.

"I surrender," he wanted to say. If that would cease the conflict, he would throw down his shield and open his arms. They were forever on the wrong sides of the battle, brothers ripped apart, set against one another.

_I only want to settle. I want you to be happy, Bucky, not living in my shadow. Not…_

Tears formed at the corners of his eyes, partly from the force choking him. So much more stirred in misery and sorrow in his chest. It was never meant to be this way. A fresh start for them both ended in the dust. It was never how he imagined launching Bucky's new life.

Steve clamped both hands around Bucky's prosthetic arm. The powerful fingers crushing his throat denied any chance of drawing breath, much less talking. Words might not help. He reached for the dark-haired man, pushing himself up from the ground.

Countless questions rose unbidden to his tongue. While he struggled to throw the soldier off, Steve refused to do further damage. This might not be Bucky. If it wasn't, then continuing to fight flew in the face of everything he stood for, everything he was.

That Bucky hadn't taken the opportunity to punch him was his only saving grace. Until that point, Steve approached his best friend with a proverbial olive branch. Now he wrenched himself up and threw the assassin to the side. They both rolled, the punishing clamp on his throat loosened only a little.

Steve drove his elbow into Bucky's ribs when they whipped over the road. That didn't loosen the grab, but he managed to get in a breath. Sliding under the prosthetic arm, he twisted the limb and threw Bucky with it. The dark-haired man swept a kick as he tried to rise, knocking the blond to the ground.

Their fight was nothing but nasty, brutish, and short. Grappling for a pin, Bucky failed to trap the blond super soldier. He smashed his closed fist into the ground short of Steve's head, and took a pair of knees to the gut. Pain creased his face, arctic eyes cold and hollow. He snatched at the leather strap of the backpack and pulled it to him.

 _He wants the backpack? He's not working for the hackers. If not them, who?_ Steve wasn't about to surrender the nanites and the tablet, though by now the screen must be shattered in pieces. The precious data still might lead to Tony's whereabouts, a slim thread of a chance that must be preserved.

"I'm sorry," Steve whispered in a croaking voice. He hooked a punch at Bucky's head, and as the man batted away the unwelcome assault, powerful legs wrapped around his waist. The forcible drag brought Bucky down to the ground.

Any anonymity was forfeit as they landed together. Steve swung again in a flurry that forced Bucky to cover his face or risk an eye. The measured strength meant to pin down the assassin rather than truly hurt him. Hearing bone crunch and watching flesh split, serum or not, was beyond anything the captain wanted to endure.

Bucky didn't hesitate. He exhibited no real restraint, driving his flesh fist into Steve's stomach. It knocked the wind out of the taller blond. More importantly, it threw him back, free to regather his wits after a moment.

With a solid punch jump, Steve sprang up, seeing his dark twin do the same. It was impossible to think of Bucky as an opponent.

They circled one another like wolves vying over scraps of flesh, starved for food.

Steve needed an out, something. In a quick survey of his surroundings, he spotted a car tucked close to a long shipping crate. Heat shimmered around the low-slung black Mercedes with deeply tinted windows. The engine was running, though the wind made hearing a purr next to impossible. He barely made out the silhouette of a driver, though no sign of a passenger.

"Bucky, what are you doing? Stand down. I'm not after you," he snarled, unsure if the assassin would hear him. He needed to hear the words all the same. Any minute he hoped Bucky would spin and throw a grin, some sign of mutual aims.

Bucky's hand moved for the machine pistol at his back.

They both reacted in synchronized madness when the car roared into action, the engine revving.

Tearing through the sand, Bucky sprang over a heap of discarded pipes. He forced himself up over a concrete wall, land on his stomach. His boots found purchase on the rough surface and pushed off, sending him into a roll.

Steve's composure slipped a crack and he bolted for an overhanging metal spur inside the abandoned site. The long metal joist ran lateral to the ground, wedged deep into pale dun scaffolding that faded into the backdrop. No wonder he barely noticed the site when dashing to the Truth and Reconciliation facility. He wasted no time going hand over hand along the spur until he could swing his legs up for a firm grip. A supportive post gave him a fresh beam to run over.

Bucky pulled himself forward until he could reach a crouch while Steve bellied up onto the groaning metal spur. Narrow metal beams underfoot hardly slowed the sure-footed assassin, and he raced over the long struts laid flat as if they were wide as a sidewalk.

A cold, leaden sensation rolled over Steve. He was going to lose his best friend again. This time, who knew how long?

He burst into a sprint for the wall that Bucky scaled. Little more than an open honeycomb of welded bars and steel beams stretched over him, the kind of place that he easily scaled. The sort of spot where a man could fight for his life, praying the floor held. He jumped and hit the wall like a mountaineer ready to scramble up a cliff face, the metal vibrating where he seized hold. A little further and he'd have Bucky and the precious bag he held.

Bucky, only a few meters to the side, launched himself onto the skeletal framework of the incomplete building. He drove his boots in and reached, using the advantage of his strength to open the gap. They were separated by ninety degrees and less than a floor. His feet slid on the weathered beams.

The scaffolding provided ample footholds for Bucky as well as Steve, and the captain crouched to leap to the next handhold.

"Bucky!" Steve prayed inwardly for forgiveness for the sin he was about to commit. " _Zhelaniye!_ "

Longing. Russian carved a clear shout. That alone meant to ring alarm bells, demanding compliance. Once he knew Bucky to scream and fight with every fibre of his being against his command words.

This man didn't falter or hesitate.

Seizing hold of the bar, Bucky practically ran up the vertical side of the building. For every meter he scaled, he gained a little height. Steve leapt after him, face set in a tight line. Few people could give him a real run for his money, but his best friend was one. And he wasn't gaining on Bucky.

The Turkish guard, on the other hand, outran him. That made no sense. He was certain nothing about the man was normal. _Has to be one of the hackers' demonstrations._

His worst fears seemed to be realized on the spot. Tony's technology created a breed of invisible warriors, anyone from a bike courier to a housewife to an army general equal to the elite special forces.

"Have mercy," Steve breathed out. He didn't know to what power.

While the wind pulled at his jacket, Bucky grabbed hold of the rails and swung forward. He landed and dashed straight along a rickety platform to jump to the next landing, leaving the blond man scrambling in his wake. A rusty ladder gave him an easy advantage to gain further height.

Steve paused to yank a pipe free from its housing and launched it like a javelin at his target, putting enough force behind the throw to knock his best friend right off his feet.

If only Bucky hadn't twisted then and there, seizing the pipe in his metal hand. The throw still shoved him back. Grating groaned in a noisy shudder while he broke his fall by rolling, smashing into sheet metal covering a hatch. He hurled the missile back at Steve with contemptuous strength, using the momentary pause in the chase to assess and find another escape. The rails moaned while Bucky slid through the bars and hurled himself through the other side of the building, hitting ground level. Clods of dirt rose into the air where shots screened his retreat.

He wasn't prepared for Steve leaping down from four stories, shield ready to break his fall. At the impact, Bucky broke into a dead run.

"Barnes, we're here for Stark!" It was a desperation play on Steve's part. Something that might break through the serious, grim expression and jar free a sensible response. He carried the hope Bucky still operated on the interests of the Avengers, or at least shared mutual cares.

For a moment he met those cold eyes, praying to every power that was for a positive response. Instead, he got a faceful of dust and nearly plowed into the hood of a car. Steve danced back.

Now they remained in plain sight, the Mercedes tore a tight circle, rushing between him and the soldier at a speed that left the tires moaning against the rough ground. The window rolled down a sliver, a tinted sheet that still granted anonymity to the interioṛ.

The past and present Captain America stared at one another across the road, and Steve charged. He hit the hood of the car and left a dent, planting his boot to leap in a high arc. Bucky waited for a moment, almost as though yearning for the rendezvous.

A bark of a pistol from the vehicle dashed that moment, restraint shattered. Mute cracks went them hurtling Ito motion. The brown-haired soldier shook off his reverie. He dashed through a light latticework mesh wall, spilling into a sandy courtyard that led to another incomplete shell once used for storage.

A dead end, and Steve was sure he had him, unhooking the shield.

Where was the rest of the team? He half-expected Natasha to leap out at any time, putting Bucky to ground. She drove the Mercedes, if it wasn't some opportunistic buyer or hacker from Truth and Reconciliatio. During the fight, she hadn't emerged and Steve was running out of opportunities.

As he swung his arm back, gunfire deflected off the surface of the shield. He instinctively ducked. So much for Natasha. Thwarted buyer went up higher in his estimation.

The driver of the Mercedes kept the vehicle on a straight track, shooting through the open window. Inky windows kept him from picking out details other than a dark arm, the black gun. Evasive measures meant a professional.

Bullets carved fresh paths through the steel and scaffolding. Mechanical chatter spurred Bucky to climb faster.

Whatever patience Steve held fled. He snapped the shield free, and it took out the side-view mirror as it ricocheted off the car. Shattered glass poured to the ground and the driver slammed the brakes to avoid a collision.

The shield banked into the building and Bucky let go, dropping to the ground. A gun was in his hand as he rose, and he squeezed off a shot in Steve's direction. The captain ducked and seized his shield where it lay embedded in a wall.

He hunted with a pack, one slow to assemble. Her boots caught his attention first. Natasha slid out from the ruined black car. One look at her drawn pistol told him everything. The cavalry. She hadn't heard him over the comms link, or she chose not to listen.

Using it for cover, he ran at full bore for Bucky. Desperation gave him an extra edge, and the burst of speed was barely enough.

Alerted by the slap of his boots, the super soldier whipped around and slid in the dirt at the last moment. The shield still clipped him and they slid together for twenty feet. Bucky punched him in the chest. The flesh hand, not the metal fist capable of plowing through reinforced steel.

It hurt. God, did it hurt. Bucky always fought dirty, even as a kid.

 _Why are we doing this? You should be safely home._ A pained smile turned up Steve's mouth.

"I could do this all day," Steve said. A trickle of blood running down his chin caught the underside of his jaw. He lifted the shield again, eclipsed by the dirty, stained star. Bucky's shield, now.

The reply to him came as puzzled, blank stare from the slightly shorter man who traveled across Europe with him and fought every dark tentacle of a monster.

"You know me. James Buchanan Barnes. Remember me. Please."

Bucky glared over his raised fists. His head snapped up at the shadow tearing over the treetops, the scrub thrashing in the turbulence kicked up by the Quinjet's engines. Blue pulses hummed in sharp spirals while the craft swiveled around, prepared to put down practically atop the two men.

The stalled detente broke. Bucky lunged and flung himself bodily at Steve, their arms locked around one another. Knocked away by the force, the shield rolled to a stop.

They stumbled back and tore through the fallen brick walls back into the building site. Pipes slid around them and Bucky seized one, snapping the blunt end at the blond.

A crack punched through the air. Steve's fist loosened and he hissed, "I won't fight you. You're my friend."

Dark hair falling around his face, the soldier threw Steve to the ground and rammed the end of the pipe deep into the cracked soil. The blur of movement sent the blond rolling to avoid it, but that awful vibranium-infused hand clamped around his bruised throat.

Choking again. Steve hit the ground again and wrenched his eyes shut against the pain exploding in his skull. Unyielding digits compressed his trachea, forcing him to still if he was to have a chance of holding out a shred of consciousness. If he kept Bucky pinned down then the others might make a retreat.

Blackness swam around the edges of his vision.

Lightning forked against the cloudy sky. The silver-tipped bolt slammed into the ground short of Steve's thigh and he went rigid when the shockwave poured over his abused nerves. Bucky's arms stiffened and the better part of the force threw him to the side.

 _No. Don't do this._ Steve chastised himself. He should have known better, given the company.

A dark figure dashed across the field at a full run. Black clothes, dark boot streaked in dust, Natasha raised her pistols. Pitiless weapons in the hands of a beautiful, unflinching killer. He willed his mouth open to shout at her to stop. Not a sound came out.

Holding onto a thought grew that much harder as his consciousness slipped under the velvety nightfall from a lack of oxygen. The pipe thrown crosswise over him pressured on the swollen tissues of his neck, keeping him from getting enough air. The electrical charge did the rest, shocking Steve still before he could pull it off.

Bucky recovered faster, long enough to fling a sphere at the redhead charging for him. He leapt aside while Natasha performed a balletic maneuver impossible to follow, spinning around and kicking the device away. It exploded bouncing under a cluster of barrels.

Fire and smoke churned to a devil's dance by the wind shrouded the open field. Steve tried and failed to force his hand up. His limbs weren't responding right.

"I can't see him!" Shielded by the wing of the jet, Clint shot another arrow after Bucky, seizing a third projectile from his quiver.

Nodding, Natasha dove from one pile of debris to another, putting her hand down for stability before she went next. Swelling rage carried her forward, hurling herself onto the super soldier's back.

Bucky was ready for her, snatching her under the jaw. Sliver fingers gleamed on her pale skin as he swiveled. She dropped the guns to the sides and slammed her wrists together around his thick neck, her head forced back by his damn palm. One good twist and he could easily snap her spine.

Frozen, Clint hauled on the bowstring with the lightest touch halting the steel-tipped arrow from loosing. A breath of motion prepared to launch it straight through flesh and bone.

A spritz of shadow sliced along the ground, a dull outline rapidly spiralling. Scarlet wings flared wide as Sam pulled his arms close, drawing them in. He was coming in too fast. Clint saw that much, and shouted, "You'll kill them both!"

Bucky and Natasha both dropped together, driven down by an imperative sense of danger. The double-footed landing was an ugly thing as Sam snapped the metallic appendages as wide as possible. Debris hung in the air as a thick screen and he soared back up, leaving a shallow, long gouge ripped into the ground.

The arrow was quiet and unimpressive by comparison.

If only Bucky didn't snatch it out of the air, turning his metal shoulder to the blinding rush. Clint bared his teeth and smashed a trigger at his side. The limpet in the shaft crackled to life, and Natasha hurled the line of her Widow's Bite at his torso. As the wire hooked around him, she threw herself close.

Ozone raked the air in a thick stench and Sam dove in to add his bulk to the redhead's efforts to pin the soldier flat. Bucky's knees convulsed and he hit the ground, muscles standing out in full relief at the discharge running through him. But he still managed to haul on one of those closed wings, leaving the metal joints screaming in violated protest.

Clint looked on in horror. The charge would have knocked an elephant flat, and it didn't do a damn thing to James Barnes. Or not enough. His tor gaze flicked over to Steve's prostrate body and the struggle by the two Avengers to keep their former leader pinned down.

He needed more voltage and knew only one place to get it. A dead run brought him at them. "Throw him into the generator!"

"What?" Sam's arms bulged and sweat ran down his dark skin. "I can barely keep him flat!"

He bowed over Bucky, grimacing as that convulsing metal hand bore down on the wing, a boy ready to rip away the appendages on a butterfly. Natasha applied steady pressure as the discharged crackle poured into the dark-haired soldier, her contorted body shaking at the strain.

They needed a miracle to move him, metal prosthetic and stubborn defiance. Clint seized the first limb in reach and pulled, the three of them crowded around Bucky. He fought them every step, using curled fingers and stiff blows to tear an opening.

No miracle descended, no angel from the mountain of the Ark overlooking the dusty valley. Only a weak Steve Rogers staggering up, a welter of bruises circling his neck. One foot went in front of the other, and he started to run, a locomotive gathering steam.

"Move," he shouted.

Clint broke first, leaving Sam and Natasha as the rear guard holding down the struggling soldier. Those clutching fingers still held the Falcon wing, prohibiting him from taking flight, and Steve closed in while they struggled to free him.

Metal wires retracted into bracelets around the redhead's wrists. She rolled to the side, favouring her left side, her gloved palm pressed tight to her flank.

Without her aid, Sam was overpowered. Bucky yanked on the wing and grabbed onto the back of the mechanical wing-pack to throw him off balance.

Crying out through gritted teeth, Sam went to one knee. "Little help here!"

Steve plowed into Barnes from the side, applying his shoulder. Once more they collided.

Rather than staying entangled, three on one, Bucky turned. His intentions were clear as he rushed out to the road. Scattered Range Rovers abandoned along the building site suggested underground entries, a fact Steve tucked away for later.

He couldn't stomach letting Bucky flee, not when he clearly had an entanglement with the hackers and Tony's disappearance.

Facing the team without Bucky was bad enough. Another magnitude to face Tony, when he returned. If he returned.

Too many questions clouded Steve's mind. Was Bucky leading him away from danger or to it? Did he know anything about Tony's disappearance? Until they sat down and talked without bullets flying in all directions, everything was open to speculation.

Of course, they weren't going to have a conversation in the middle of a battlefield.  

Looking for an advantage of height, Steve zeroed in on an incomplete warehouse. The corrugated tin roof of the incomplete building buckled under his weight as he leapt onto it, sprinting to catch the vibranium disk. He swung off a rail and crashed down onto the roof of the Rover, flattening it by three inches. Smashing the accelerator, Bucky wrenched the wheel around to avoid immediate collision with a steel strut poking out of the ground. The vehicle tipped at a drunken angle and dropped onto all four tires.

The whole vehicle rocked on its axles, and Bucky twisted around in the driver's seat. Steve clung to the roof with both hands, his body sliding across the steel. Another sharp jerk on the wheel flung the blond about like a rag doll, deforming the metal as he tightened his grip.

"Are you trying to get us killed?" Steve shouted.

Evidently the answer was yes. They needed a long talk and a few rounds in the boxing ring at this rate. The Range Rover slewed around the dusty road as Bucky's defensive driving tested Steve's hold to the limits. He forced the vehicle over the uneven trunk, punched through the collapsed half-built structures around them. Bucky flattened the accelerator, alternating with violent braking, and roaring to speed again.

While the Range Rover tipped, Steve's hands slid along the warped lines of the car.  

"Not this time, you're not getting away. I'm your friend, Buck, you _know_ that," Steve said, kicking in the window with both boots. He slid through, jackknifing to fit in the narrow frame.

Bucky had no choice but to absorb the hit, throwing up his left arm, the prosthetic absorbing the worst of the kick. He tried to shove Steve back out, but their entangled limbs and combined weight simply proved too much.

Bucky snarled, a guttural sound on the threshold of a whisper.

His boot bounced off the inner door on the passenger side. The second kick blew the door open, hinges squealing. An open escape route tore a hole in Steve's heart.

Clint called for electricity. Without Mjolnir, the best option left to Steve came up ahead.

Bucky was running. Running from him. Running from the Avengers, the team he led. Whatever happened in Russia, he clearly held no trust in someone who loved him dearly as a brother.

A shot hit the passenger door. Bucky swore.

_Natasha._

The windscreen spiderwebbed with another shot. The slug buried itself in the backseat, padding flying out. Steve ducked, hand tight on the wheel, and he yanked it back and forth until the Range Rover squealed like a gyroscope. Bucky broke his grip, ready to slip free.

Steve rammed the vehicle through a stack of barrels and a fence to the generator. A vicious sidekick knocked the brown-haired soldier out, though the tethered seatbelt still encircled his flesh arm. A yell from Bucky split the air, accompanying the door screeching on metal pylons and pillars.

Ripping the backpack free came easy, its weight negligible in his hands. The metal container and the tablet jostled together, tempting to investigate, but the wrong time.

One hard twist and they crashed into the generators. The bumper tore off, and the rough exposed guts of the Range Rover ripped off the power box's flimsy housing. Crashing into a pole sent a shower of dislodged cables down onto Bucky.

The volts shocking him from Natasha and Clint were nothing next to the eruption that roared through him. Steve threw the Rover into reverse as the charge poured into Bucky and through him.

"I'm sorry, it's the only way," he repeated his mantra as the dashboard lit up and faded. Melting rubber and acrid ozone gagged him.

Bucky curled in the fetal position on the ground.

Not the maddest decision Steve ever made. He re-evaluated his choices from the driver's side seat, watching the spasms riddling the fallen soldier's body taper off. Each jerk left a gaping pang of shock after the pain in his heart.

Ahead of the others, Natasha reached them first, taking in the decimation and calling for wooden spars. Minutes crawled past at a glacial pace to Steve while the team assembled the necessary makeshift travois from poles lashed together with torn shirts and a dusty old tarp.

As the live wires crackled, Clint and Sam manoeuvred the stretcher. It fell to Natasha to fish out the prostrate, unmoving form of James Barnes from the crackling hailstorm. Her choice sealed his fate, pulling him by the flesh arm and not the charged prosthetic.

Somehow they managed to free him. Steve rested his brow on the steering wheel. His dry eyes betrayed the despondent knot of misery stifling him.

A fist tapped on the driver's side window. Wearily, he lifted his head.

Clint frowned at what he saw. Such old eyes didn't belong to a man who barely looked past his thirtieth birthday. Haggard and worn down, the pure blue lacked their usual glow.

 _He hurts. This is too much_. Private worries he never dared to entertain aloud bit deep into the archer's chest. He waited for Steve to press open the door, slow, making sure the metal lip avoided any flesh contact.

"Is it safe to come out?" Steve asked.  
"Yeah." Clint cleared his throat. No beating about the bush, that was the best approach. "He's alive."

The wind moaned. Sparks trickled out of a broken wire. Steve tasted the air and heard the distant conversation between Natasha and Sam over the travois, the vet performing first aid as best he could.

The world seemed a bit brighter. Enough that Steve took in a deep breath. He hurt, but pain meant he lived.

"He shouldn't be."

"Yeah, preach it to the choir, Cap. Sam has a lot of questions about that."  
Putting his hand to his face, Steve let the momentary dizziness pass over him. "I didn't know he could take that much. It was a guess. What does that make me if I guessed?"

"A hero." Clint smirked as he frowned. "Get out of there. We'll get to the jet and figure out the next move."

The protection of the Range Rover slid away as Steve slid out. Both his boots hit the ground. He made only a few uneasy steps forward. "I got something off a guard. Anything on Tony?"

Clint shook his head. "I hoped you spotted him."

Natasha drew near them, her face dirtied. "Steve? He's asking for you."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	10. A Truth Within Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Doesn't matter about them. Duty and responsibility belong to the man with the shield. I told you, I'm retired." Steve dropped his gaze to his boots. "It's about time I got out of the game. Nat keeps making hints, and honestly, she's right. The shield is yours, Barnes, if you want it. Hang it up if you don't. But I'm not your replacement."
> 
> "Cap," Bucky whispered.

Hope was a funny drug. The serum banished Steve's ability to get properly drunk. A few times, he tried with Bucky and the rest of the Howling Commandos during their European tour, to absolutely no avail. Cigarettes, had he ever been inclined to smoke, did nothing but foul his breath and stain his teeth. Presumably illegal substances ran into the same hindrances when exposed to his system. It seemed he was doomed to be as noble a soul as Abraham Erskine first encountered on the grounds of Camp Lehigh.

Natasha's invitation rung in his ears and Steve Rogers tingled in excitement and madcap exhilaration. He wanted to laugh and weep into his sleeve. Of course, neither response was appropriate. The team knew him well enough to read the finer gradients of his moods. While he mastered his stoic expression, the deep dimple in his forehead taking shape, she retreated to give him some space.

If only Clint thought to do the same. He smacked his gloved hand hard against Steve's bruised back. "Best news we've had in an hour. Barring that he's playing us for fools though."

The smack forced the blond captain forward a step. His filthy uniform shed dust and needed a proper cleaning, something Steve pushed to the corner of his mind. He had greater things to concern himself with than his appearance. Bucky saw him in drab hand-me-downs scraped from neighbourhood housewives that took pity on the orphan boy, when they could scarcely afford to keep themselves in clothes. They shared a camp in miserable conditions without a shower or a proper shave for weeks, and joked about their stench overwhelming the German lines.

Why worry now? A mote of shame burned deep while Steve brushed his hand over his hair and tried to right his torn sleeve by a good tug.

He tread softly to the man lying out on their makeshift attempt at a travois. Ragged cloth straps tugged tight between the mismatched wooden poles. Sam made an effort to keep Bucky on his back, but no force short of death or a locomotive seemed able to do that. Supporting himself on his metal arm, the assassin disguised some of the obvious discomfort contorting his expression.

Too late if he meant to hide his pain and emotional distress. Steve understood what the narrow, pale eyes signalled. The way Bucky bit down on his inner cheek at the corner of his mouth probably meant to convey indecision, or flattening out a smug grin. The blond knew better. He'd had a century to decipher his best friend's moods.

"I'm sorry," Bucky said in a low, hoarse mutter.

Sam stood by, hands extended in a gesture of frustrated impotence. "I've told him to lie down. May be able to stabilize him here, but until I get him on the Quinjet, I can't do more than field dressing."

Not trusting himself to speak a word, Steve dropped down to a crouch in front of the travois. He held out his gloved hand and Bucky clasped it, flesh and bone fingers shaking so hard they visibly trembled. The tightening grip ground the smaller bones in Steve's hand together.

Bucky clung on for dear life and couldn't let go. He turned his face away, refusing to meet their eyes.

"Can we have a moment?" Steve asked, nodding at Sam.

"Yeah, but he pulls any funny business and I'll shoot him." Sam grimaced and tapped the holster at his side. "Somewhere non-vital, but I don't want any funny business here. We can't afford to stay for long." He retreated in slow steps, keeping a firm bead on the two men in their rendezvous.

Rousing speeches and personal touches came naturally to Steve in nearly every situation. He had plenty of practice consoling soldiers and children. His best friend was the chink in his armour. Not much happy news waited them in the creaking building site. The questions had to wait.

"You doing okay?"

"I shouldn't be here," Bucky said. He shot furtive looks to the horizon and the buildings, measuring his surroundings. " _You_ shouldn't be here. Out in the open, you make too clear a target. There are snipers out there, good ones. Scoring a hit on you would be a coup."

All the topics they could discuss, the last Steve expected was a running commentary on his precarious position. He wiped the tacky blood from his jaw. Bucky caught the motion and looked stricken, hanging his head.

"You're back. That's all that matters."

"Steve, you've gotta go. Don't stay. Not on my account. I'll get out of here myself soon." The assassin rolled onto his side, testing the range of motion in his legs. He winced as his knee straightened out, but it held up as he tested pushing his boot down.

"Don't be foolish," Steve said. "You just had a great shock. No sudden moves or decisions for twenty-four hours, remember? I'll call over Natasha. We'll get you up and in the Quinjet in no time at all. You need a rest."

_And I want to hold you until the pain stops._

Enticed to watch his best friend move and breathe, he needed contact, the assurance of his hand resting on Bucky's shoulder. Touch helped convince Steve that he wasn't hallucinating from asphyxiation in the dust. The pressure remained light, undemanding.

Bucky shut his eyes, long lashes blotting out the pale blue. He went rigid again under the tender reassurance meant to encourage him, shrinking back against the travois. So much pain riddled his suffering body. Every muscle twinged involuntarily to a tremor rattling him down to his heels. "That's not possible. Not after what I've done. Let me go, Steve. It's good to see you back, good to see you alive. Nat told me you…" Faltering words stumbled over a gaping pause. He struggled to master his expression. "You took the shield back up. They need you, the _world_ needs you. I'm glad. You know I never wanted it."

Steve knew. He practically forced the future of James Buchanan Barnes by swearing his will and testament upon a man who never had to take on the legacy. But Bucky had. More than taken the shield and the title. He excelled. "It's only a stopgap measure, Buck. Like a substitute teacher. I'm just filling in."

"You don't believe that. You know how it goes." The dark-haired soldier swallowed and sank lower, his body curled in a defensive arch, chin touching his chest. For several long moments, he went silent. Gasps slid in an abraded susurrus over his cracked lips.

Iron slid into the blond's reply. "We're not leaving without you." That was it. Case closed. Steve curled his fingers twice to call Natasha to his side. "By rights you ought to be dead. That much electricity going through you… We have to get you to a hospital."

"No. You're wasting time. They're out there." Bitterly protesting to the last, Bucky fell silent as agony gripped his entrails.

Every minute they spent on the ground cooled the trail left in Tony's wake. Compromising by stabilizing Bucky was a no-brainer, something Stark himself would have insisted upon. He never much cared about his own safety. Steve grimaced while he planted the heel of his hand on the other super soldier's shoulder, flattening him against the ratty stretcher.

Bending to seize two of the poles, Natasha hoisted them with much less difficulty than her lithe build implied. Steve moved to the head of the travois and lifted Bucky up, nodding. "Let's move out. Sam and Clint, give us cover. We're wasting time standing here."

"Don't," Bucky moaned.

Like any of them were going to drop him and dash, even when the potshots from the trees began. With a nod to the redhead, they rushed double time for the Quinjet. Clint bolted ahead to reach the ramp, prepared to spin up the engines and get the bird in the air. The bullets flying wide weren't likely to get through the armour. Steve remembered the RPGs, though, and wasn't willing to risk anyone's neck but his own.

"How the hell is he alive?" Sam hissed, jogging past them as he pulled out his guns. "Way I see it, we should be carrying a corpse right now. They experiment on him? He know anything about Tony?"

Disgust escaped in a warning hiss from the redhead. She could be a mother bear when pricked the wrong way. Teeth set, Nat glared at him. "You really going to interrogate him _now_?" 

"Tony," Steve said. Nanites surging uncontrolled through Bucky's body left him cold. The only person who really understood their capabilities was missing. He prayed Tony hadn't changed his passwords and voice authorizations.

The mere invocation of his name caused Bucky to cry out again while they jogged him to the safety of the jet. Another two shots struck too close for comfort, barely a meter wide. Steve lengthened his pace, pulling the redhead to match his stride.

* * *

They fell into an old rhythm disrupted for nearly two years. Clint buckled up front and got the engines roaring as soon as Nat's boots struck the ramp. She no sooner hit the cargo bay than the fuselage rattled. Rotors spun into a high, almost inaudible whine, adding to the thrust that propelled the Quinjet off the ground.

The team spun like gears in well-oiled machinery, everyone assigned their role with minimal conversation. Safely strapped down, Bucky lay on a flat bench. His fixed gaze focused on the metal beams overhead while Sam tore into a first aid kit, applying blue gel patches to several superficial cuts. The sting barely registered. Whatever pain he harboured deep within wasn't a matter of broken bones or lacerations.

"You're lucky--" Sam began.

"Don't speak to me of luck," Bucky replied, his mouth a white line. He looked no different at all from the man who set out on a mission to the Russian Far East.

Blowing out a breath, the dark-skinned man shook his head. Long experience dealing with vets taught him not to push buttons, and he let the anger dissolve away. He went to slap on another patch, the thin plastic film fluttering to the deck. "Shit."

Steve refused to move more than a few inches, the calm at the heart of the storm. A mild lift of his eyebrows answered the curse, nothing else. "Wilson, you've usually got a better bedside manner."

Sam gestured at Bucky's exposed shoulder and neck. Staring for any length of time on the ravaged body of his best friend left Steve profoundly uncomfortable. Every scar stood as testimony to his failures in Azzano and the Alps, the Channel, and Russia. Arnim Zola's depredations recorded on Bucky's skin were censure that Captain America failed to protect his own.

Scars missing, a silver lacework washed away to leave perfectly smooth flesh. Even the bruises left by Steve's fists and the Turkish guard were little better than imagined blotches, not a watercolour of faded lavender on hard muscle.

"The nanites. It has to be the nanites. Not even the serum…" His head tilted, Steve considered the lack of injuries and finally Bucky's closed, ravaged countenance. The words faded on his lips. What medicine the situation called for came from the heart, not a medicine cabinet or a first aid kit.

Bucky needed more than guesses and platitudes.

"I told you. You can't trust me. I can't even trust myself. If you had Stark, you might have a chance." He ignored the team moving around him, cradling his prosthetic arm to his chest, until Steve filled his vision, bending over him.

"We get Tony. No compromises on that, Buck. He's one of us." Steve's jaw flexed. "You know anything about these folks he was meeting?"

A bitter smirk twisted Bucky's mouth, skewed out of alignment. Pain bloomed in his eyes, and he shied away from meeting Steve's gaze. His body shook in its tethered cradle, so bad the metal clattered on the jet's inner wall. "The Bulgarians? A front to pull Tony out into the open." He sucked in a hard breath. "They got what they want. Him."

Not only pain. Tears. Steve took Bucky's living hand in his own, holding it tight. "They're going to sure regret taking him. We're going to find him and recover him. But we're not going in guns blazing without knowing what we're dealing with and we have every tool to find him. Stark's a survivor, Buck, and they won't keep him down for long."

"Whatever you say." The admission came as close to defeat as Bucky allowed himself.

"The man constructed an exoskeleton in a cave, for crying out loud," Steve said. "Have faith in him, Buck."

"I failed him." Facts struck hammer blows of Bucky's toneless voice. "I tried to kill you. Again. I was this close to strangling you."

The pained smile crossing Steve's swollen mouth vanished after a few moments. "But you didn't." He squeezed his hand tighter, a reminder, a lifeline back to the land of free choice and deliverance. "We need you, Buck. _Tony_ needs you. You've got valuable information and we're honestly flying blind. This was our best shot."

"Why go after me? You could've gone for him."

"Aside from the fact that Tony would try to blow out a window if I showed up empty-handed?" Their quiet conversation rose in pitch as he tried to laugh. Laughter felt alien and badly fitted to Steve. He settled for blowing out a long breath that never quite reached the pitch or volume of a sigh. "I lost you once. I can't fail you again." Another squeeze of his hand earned a reciprocal tightening grip as Bucky responded. Steve went on. "This is a job for Captain America. You."

"Maybe you think so. They don't." Bucky nodded at the cockpit.

Though they sat forward, the soft argument between Clint and Natasha reached a frosty peak. He needn't hear their sharp words to know their meaning. Fighting, a chilly disagreement, peppered by Barnes' name now and then. Sam propped himself up in the jump seat, closing up the medkit.

"Doesn't matter about them. Duty and responsibility belong to the man with the shield. I told you, I'm retired." Steve dropped his gaze to his boots. "It's about time I got out of the game. Nat keeps making hints, and honestly, she's right. The shield is yours, Barnes, if you want it. Hang it up if you don't. But I'm not your replacement."

"Cap," Bucky whispered. He dared not to break the moment.

Steve's decision settled lightly over him, a sense of rightness locking into place. A smile lifted his mouth as the sight of Bucky warmed his spirits. Bequeathing the choice brightened the darkness around his heart. Quietly he took his place next to Sam.

"Nat, we can't take what he says at face value. This could be a show to earn our trust before all hell breaks loose," Clint said, and cut off his words. He faced forward, staring over the grid map projected onto the glass. "Someone has to say it, Rogers."

Brooding anger stirred under the redhead's composed face. Clutching the armrests of her seat, she sat wooden and upright.

"We need to find Stark. Before we debrief Bucky, how much intel do we have? Anything fresh?" Steve asked.

Natasha shook her head, the dark wave of her fiery hair fallen loose from behind her ears. The headset rested in her lap, cords pinned into the ports on the Quinjet's dash. "Nothing. I ran queries with Friday, but the AI hasn't discerned anything traces of him yet. When we gain any insight, you'll be the first to know."

"Can we talk about the time bomb on our jet?" Clint asked.

The redhead and Steve replied, "No," in tandem.

Sam shook his head. "I'm with Barton. Now may not be the best time to discuss Stark's whereabouts when we have an unstable super soldier behind us."

"Unstable?" The archer swiveled in his seat. "I'll put this plane down right now if we're about to see him go loco."

In the back of the jet, Bucky stiffened. A subtle thing, but enough that Steve caught the traces. Wishing he could forget the array of stiffness and pain, Steve leaned his head back against the padded seat. Time. They needed time, and he had to hope Tony held out, wherever he was. "Sam, report."

"He can hear you." Natasha plugged in another few numbers onto the screen. "Nothing like talking about people in earshot. Whatever happened to manners?"  
"His vitals aren't good and I have no idea of what Stark's nanotech can do. There, you happy to hear me say it?" A grimace deepened as Sam held out a hand, asking for patience. "He took enough electricity to stop his heart and there's no telling what kind of internal issues that caused. Steve, you haven't slept in two days. You may convince me you can carry on like a good soldier, but a lack of sleep impairs judgment and we need every advantage we can get. Plus, we need Friday up and running."

She frowned slightly. "And we haven't got any solid leads to run on unless we get on the ground and start questioning those guards. Half of them will have reached Silopi by now, if they didn't slip over the border into Iraq. Our odds don't look good, gentlemen."

After a harrowing, long pause, Clint rubbed his face. "You point me and I'll get us there. He starts acting like he did on the ground, though, I'm jettisoning Barnes. Nothing personal, but you're all growing on me. I might regret your deaths."

Sam snorted in spite of himself. The vote of confidence, however damning, eased the tension by a fraction to the point the team pretended it wasn't there, that they didn't stand at the brink of drawn weapons or hard words over their former leader lying flat on his back.

The soft bluster of coughing, wet and hacking, interrupted them. Steve tried to ignore the lack of sleep, but that noise cut through him. He nodded. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. Then get us into friendly airspace and on the ground. We need resources. Nat, keep working with Friday, see what Stark's files can give you. Sam, with me, let's keep Bucky stable until we get on the ground."

Steve decided the whole problem with leadership was that he wore it like a comfortable coat. It slipped right on without him even noticing. Not for much longer. If Bucky laid down the mantle, he would be the first to congratulate him, surrendering whatever titles and glory went along with the shield. For now, he needed to reassure the tense soldier.  
His presence was the best he could do. He settled in next to the bench, leaning in. Bucky's pale eyes met his. Nanites might repair the wounds to his body, but they could do nothing for the visible unease churning in the dark-haired assassin's soul. Steve leaned in, the way he used to do when they were young, Bucky reading in the big chair his father bought and the smaller, frail blond on the floor doing his homework.

"It's going to work out," Steve said.

The reply came fully five minutes later, almost lost to the ambient hum of the engines. "I'm not so sure." Bucky sounded terribly exhausted, worn thin by the struggle to stay awake. "We're already at war."

Decades ago, entering the conflict under the American flag was easy. The enemy was a known quantity. But times changed, armies replaced by guerrilla groups, charismatic leaders stirring the populace by shadowy figures reveling in their anonymity. Behind changing names and blurry boundaries, the presences clamouring for violence always shifted. Steve felt the threat clear as day. But the perpetrators? More than ever, he wasn't sure who reached out to strike him down and neutralize the Avengers.

But in his heart, he already knew. HYDRA.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	11. Upstate New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That's what friends are for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, a softer side after the violence. Bucky and Steve haven't seen one another for more than two years. Movie-based readers, all you need to know is that Steve fell in an assassination attempt. Assumed dead by the world, his legacy as Captain America went to Bucky after Tony received the last will and testament. Bucky acted as Captain America and led the Avengers until his disappearance over the area where Russia, China, and North Korea share a border. Inspired from _Captain America: Death of Captain America_.

Bucky looked over the patchwork quilt in tawny golds and tarnished copper, the odd burst of livid flame streaking the surrounding woodlands. He forgot how intense autumn in the Northeast could be. Tony took great pleasure introducing him to all the haunts he never had money or time to enjoy as a teen -- the Catskills, Lake Placid, the Finger Lakes.

They did a number on every rustic cabin or scenic overlook. He drew a squiggly mental line along an imaginary map of the Hudson Valley to upstate.

"It's sure something, isn't it?" Steve's voice preceded him to the couch. He dropped down beside Bucky, leaving the steel frame creaking in a loud protest.

"Heck of a lot different than the Turkish highlands. More trees," Bucky said.

Swinging his arm over the back of the thick cushions, the blond handed over a cold glass bottle still sweating condensation. "Lot less dust, that's for sure."

Bucky took the bottle. A flick of his metal thumb sent the cap bouncing off the floor, rolling up against the floor to ceiling window. Spices rolled up in a heady perfume through the neck, and he breathed deep to place the hidden ingredients.

"You know a beer won't do a lick of good for guys like us," he said.

Steve made a noncommittal sound at the back of his throat. A keg of the craft beer would do nothing but leave his stomach unsettled for a bit. "I like the taste."

They clinked their bottles together in a toast and drank in companionable silence. Bucky leaned forward to take in the forested view without caring for the trees or the trimmed green grass. Coming to the upstate facility instead of the Tower was Steve's decision. After two days of enforced rehabilitation, Bucky found the glass windows and solid walls confining, pressing in.

"You're planning on going, aren't you?" Steve rested the bottle on his knee.

"Soon as possible. Didn't want to seem ungrateful for the help," Bucky said. He gave a shadow of his old grin, the tight curve of his mouth and ashen gaze blackened by a deep inner pain.

"You aren't tied down here. I figured you would want to get a move on as soon as you were on your feet," Steve said.

"Good now as I'm going to be."

"You up to this?"

"Going to have to be." Bucky swigged another sip of the beer. Steve was right, the flavour appealed with its complex spiciness and smoke. Not what he expected, but he admitted it wasn't bad at all. "I'll go stir crazy staying out of action any longer."

Sweeping his gaze over Bucky from head to toe gave comfort to some corner of Steve's mind that still firmly disbelieved the man sitting here actually drew breath. It all felt like a dream. He brushed his arm against the metal prosthetic as he sat up straight, an accidental move true, but one needed to convince himself he wasn't looking at an illusion.

"The Quinjet is yours as soon as you're ready to move out."

The easy candor of Steve's tone sent a visible pang of shock through the dark-haired man. His back stiffened and he lurched back, the couch sliding under him by a few inches. "Wait. Steve, you don't want me up there."

"Why? You can pilot it fine. It's not like you would go alone." A warm smile lifted Steve's mouth. "Clint and Nat haven't spent much time outside since you came back. Give them a chance to see the sun before the week is out."

"Steve… The problem isn't them or the technology. I mean, I can fly the jet. You can't trust _me_."  

The smile never faltered. Tipping his head, the blond offered a lengthy, searching look. "Would you be here if I believed that? Come on, out with it."

Bucky put the bottle on the floor and ran both his hands through his loose dark hair. Another few inches added to its length before he disappeared, and the ends brushed over his collarbone. His flesh hand shook. "You see me as your best friend, the guy at your side. Not someone who disappeared off the face of the earth for months."

He couldn't bring himself to say two years. The idea of living away from the team for so long, abandoning his carefully assembled life, was too enormous to wrap his arms around. If he stopped and really thought about the situation, terror threatened to crush his momentum. He would do better curling up on the floor or snagging Steve's motorcycle and driving until he ran out of land.

Steve, who trusted him totally, said nothing. He waited. No arguing, no challenging, he gave Bucky space to continue, proof he was a better man. A candidate for sainthood, even.

"I don't remember the whole time. Just pieces and parts." His lips curled in a lupine snarl. A quiver of anger bled into Bucky's voice as he found his stride. "Nothing good stands out in my memory about that time. Mostly traveling and waiting between meetings with contacts. The kind of folks you wouldn't like, ones who undermine governments and disrupt society from below. Some violence here and there. But I wasn't fighting back against acts that violate everything I stand for now. They got me, Steve."

Gently laying his hand on the vibranium arm, Steve let the touch settle in. "That wasn't you. We knew the risks about the programming."

"That's why trusting me with the Quinjet or access to Avengers files is foolish, even downright dangerous." Bucky met that almost tranquil gaze. "The programming slipped. Sometimes I remembered fragments or felt pieces that never fit into the puzzle. After hearing a song or noticing a building, something came back. The analysts kept an eye out for signs of that, and they put me back under as soon as I showed signs of being Bucky, not the Asset."

He spat the title out. Dehumanized faces floated through his dreams, talking about him and discussing him as an object, a body strapped to a chair, as if he wasn't there.

Steve tightened his hold on Bucky's arm as the shaking became palpable, a reflection of inner turbulence. "I've got you. I'm right here with you."

 _I'm with you._ Tony said the same when they shared a bed and nightmares launched the scarred veteran out of sleep, thrashing and throwing the sheets aside.

No way did Steve Rogers know that endearment to bring Bucky back down to earth. In some strange twist of fate, he said the magic words, but in the wrong voice, from the wrong face. The honest desire to comfort only made everything worse.

"I went along with that bullshit. I never fought back, not once. Don't you get it? Whatever let me loose is screwing with us, and I could turn at any time." Bent over double, Bucky locked his laced fingers behind his head. Saying the fears aloud was so much worse than thinking them, realizing the danger in every sense.

Steve rubbed his best friend's back in slow circles. "You don't believe that at heart. You had every chance to run in the past forty-eight hours. Instead you stayed and received medical attention top to bottom."

"Is that gonna give you consolation when I try to destroy everything you built?"

"We built." The correction came at a whisper, little more. "I don't need consolation because you won't pull anything like that. I have faith in you."

Bucky hunched lower. "Why? Steve, listen to yourself. This isn't a case of making a bad choice. I know what I did, the deals I made. Put bullets into people, good people who wanted to make a stand against corruption."

"Because you care about your friends and you want Stark back," Steve said.

"I do now. I wanted Stark when I was under the influence, too."

"Good. Then you have something to hold onto--"

Bucky slid off the couch to his knees and stared up at the taller blond man, expression haggard and aghast. "Listen to me. Please, hear what I'm telling you. I knew Stark would come. I _wanted_ him to. That was my whole job, to get him to come out from the protection of the team where I could isolate him and capture him. He came to Turkey because of me." Tears slipped down his face, washing silver tracks in the cool morning light. "He learned about the weapons deal because I wanted him to know. He's gone because everything I set in motion trapped him, and my puppet masters have what they want."

Steve held on as long as he could, that lifeline fo touch lasting for a few more seconds until Bucky drew back. "HYDRA."

A sharp, curt nod answered where the super soldier's voice failed.

"What HYDRA did wasn't you, Bucky. They prey on our greatest vulnerabilities and subvert what we care about." Anger finally simmered in Steve's blue eyes, though he turned it on the distant trees. "Don't mistake forced obedience for willing compliance. You fought their influence over you to your very bones. No matter what kind of techniques they use, they cannot destroy the goodness of your soul or your heart. I will never agree you hurt Tony willingly."

"You're a fool."

Steve dropped to the ground beside Bucky, meeting him eye to eye. "Not likely. They used you to grab Stark. Did they know what he was working on?"

"Yes. Through me."

"They probably knew he had nanotech going long before you. You at best confirmed it," Steve said.

"I gave them the key. Without me, HYDRA lacked good inroads to his systems, ideas about the nanite capabilities, who he worked with. I was an open book." Bucky's laugh scored his throat with steely claws. "If it weren't true, he would be a thorn in our sides right now. If there were any other explanation for my actions, I'd tell you."

His body shook when Steve seized his shoulders in both hands. Perfect, unscarred flesh melded around the metal arm, palpable even under the filmy athletic shirt Bucky wore.

In the brief pause, the dark-haired man flinched. He went rigid, like he expected to be hit.

Fate delivered a firm, unrelenting embrace instead. Steve pulled him in, head tilted down. "Stark ought to be the one telling you what's what. I make a bad replacement. We'll have to make do. You never betrayed Stark. You hold the keys to bring him back."

Bucky shook his head. "I don't know if I can. If he'll ever trust me."

"Two separate issues and you know Stark by now. He never trusts anyone. When he lets you in, though, it lasts forever," Steve said.

Impossible not to swallow a sob. Bucky knew truth when he heard it though he couldn't accept it. Everything Tony strove to build he undermined in a stroke. "What do you have on him? Because Stark won't stay quiet in HYDRA hands. He would fight and look for a way out. I warned them to expect it, I'm sure. He steps out of line, he'll end up dead."

"HYDRA doesn't give up assets like that," Steve said.

Bucky raised his head. His eyes gleamed, mouth twisted. "This time, they would. They have what they want in the nanites. Tony is icing on the cake. He tries to poison anyone and he is done."

The blond captain nodded and pushed Bucky back. "Then you better get started. Friday is at your disposal, and whatever Natasha and Clint dug up. Whatever you need."

"Why?" Bucky asked. He struggled to find his feet when that sensation of weightlessness settled over him. "Why do this?"

Steve's eyebrows shot up. He reached for the discarded bottle, carrying both in one hand. "You have to ask?" Surprise danced across his blue eyes. "It's the right thing to do. He makes you happy. You love him. Now stop asking me nonsensical questions and get that shield."

"Won't you--?"

Shaking his head, Steve smiled wanly. "HYDRA expects me out in the field. I doubt you were aiming only for Tony. If they think he's expendable, they gunned for me in the first place. I can do more good holding down the fort while you give them a nasty surprise."

Bucky blinked and sank back onto his haunches. "They don't know I went rogue, do they?"

"They will soon enough. Make the most of the chance. And bring me back a postcard."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	12. Mission Control

Bucky had enough time for a cold shower and a fresh change of clothes when hell broke loose. He pulled a waffled heather grey shirt on over his head while ducking through the door to his suite, turning sideways at the last moment to avoid a collision. Pulling down on the hem, he peered at the flash of flame-red hair and a black motorcycle jacket. Natasha pivoted away from him, continuing down the hallway, and he fell in step beside her. His longer stride easily kept up with her leggy gait.

"What's the issue?" he asked.

"Another attack on Friday. Have to keep her from going down," she said.

A frown cut into his usual reserve, eroding the granite neutrality. He studied the determined expression she wore, and slid his phone out of his pocket. "Do you want me to call in anyone?"

"Who are you going to call? I've been tracking down the attacks for the last forty-eight hours. Clint's already plugged in. We've been doing everything we can to find their source. Tony may be behind it or the people keeping Tony are," she said. They turned in tandem down a well-lit corridor, bypassing several doors displaying partial characters and rapidly flashing lights on the keypads.

He noted the keypads' state and nodded at them. "Is it safe for us to be in the building with the AI on the fritz? I assume we have the same layers of security and isolation as the Avengers Tower, or have you changed the configuration since…"

Since the moment he vanished. The time he died. How many ways he could say the ugly truth and it would still be a razor-thin cut on his pride. Bucky mused over the existence of pride after so many attempts by his captors and enemies to scrape him to the bottom of the vessel, erasing his personality and leaving him a tabula rasa for whatever programming waited for installation. Despite the best efforts of Arnim Zola and a dozen of his Soviet proteges through the years, his pride invariably came back, a deep-rooted weed willing to push through the surface of their commands and cracking carefully constructed figments of memory and personality.

But pride could hurt, and Natasha knew exactly which weak points to strike for a reaction, if she wanted one.

Instead, she gave him a ghost of a smile and hastened on while the lights blipped against the trackpads. "Side effect of the hacking. Any problems are usually temporary. Guess we shouldn't wait long."

"No surprise. Truth and Reconciliation are some of the best," he said.

She nodded.

"Give me something to do, Nat. I can't sit on my hands while you scour the world for a needle."

"You are helping. Research takes time." Natasha led the way through the facility. "Come on, you know that missions are ninety percent waiting and ten percent action."

They made another turn to a set of stairs, descending deeper into the stony bedrock of upstate New York. Cooler air washed over them, interrupted by a patch of considerable heat welling out of a vent. He measured the number of steps to the first door and how many cameras visibly monitored their presence, listening to the rotating fans pumping the conditioned air out in a current. She hadn't answered his question as they walked, a fact he noted.

More to worry about later. In her shoes, he would show himself the same degree of caution. Steve might judge him better, giving an all-clear. That didn't mean a damn thing. The children of the Red Room and Department X learned the hard way no one could really be trusted. Tolerated, maybe. Entrusted with particular knowledge. But the moment you dropped your guard, you left yourself wide open and vulnerable to the worst kind of enemies. The ones who knew you best inflicted the greatest damage.

"Here we are," Natasha said. She stopped in front of a solid grey wall.

Bucky tilted his head a degree. Seamless panels connected together in a blank stretch interrupted by a single vent. It looked like a wall, but he knew Tony's defensive mechanisms too well. "Unless I've forgotten everything, he's gonna hide his work in plain sight." He rested his metal fingers against the surface of the wall and felt the resistance pressing back unevenly against the digits. Vibranium plates in his arm hummed to a low key that left his shoulder aching, his teeth resonating to a different note in the same chord. "Yeah, that's Tony's work all right."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Show-off."

Pushing on the wall, Bucky's fingers created tiny divots in the hard glassy surface. It bent in tiny concentric circles under his touch rather than shattering, acting like a resistant forcefield. That was new to him. Tony hadn't mastered forcefields much during their time together. Buck applied himself further and felt his hand slip through the wall, passing through a jelly-like energy barrier. It was a strange sensation even to a man used to many oddities.

"Sesame," he said.

"Stop that. What was he up to in here?"

She startled beside him, raising her wrist to swipe over an empty patch of wall. All at once the illusion went transparent, exposing a glassed-in fishbowl of a room with far too many ricochet angles for Bucky to be happy. He pushed himself forward rather than wait for the AI to disengage the locks.

"Wait, you can't," she started to speak, and bit off her words when the matrix of pale silvery blue light formed around his silhouette. He bulled his way through against the elastic pressure, and the meniscus of energy popped free.

Holes reformed as the lattice filled in. Natasha swiped her wrist again, and bumped her closed fist gently against the door.

Watching with a look of bemusement to match his obvious lack of sleep, Clint sat straight up in his chair. His boots rested beside a long curving desk alongside three takeout boxes of Chinese food, the chopsticks poking upright from a mound of deep fried chicken balls. The tantalizing scent of fried rice and vegetables simmering in a dark, gelatinous sauce swept away from him. He pulled one headphone off his ear and cracked a tentative smirk.

"Did you seriously just lock Nat out? If this is your way of saying you need to talk, there are better ways to do it. Like the bathroom," the archer suggested.

"No. She said the AI is acting up and I assumed the lack of a door was part of that." Bucky paced in front of the wall and looked for a handle of some kind. He could usually trust Tony to involve a mechanical feature to go along with his technological contraptions, though a casual search turned up nothing. Instead, he prodded the datapad and typed in his password. Nothing happened.

"Try _eclair_ ," Clint said.

"Eclair?"

The blond archer shot a thumbs-up at Natasha. "Hey, I had to come up with something after she made me reset the master password eighteen times in the same hour."

"How bad is the attack on the AI? Do you have any idea of where it's coming from?" Bucky decided not to argue the logic, busying himself typing in the password and listening to a litany of buzzing and beeps. The doors disengaged with a hiss, and the redheaded woman stepped through.

"If either of you had anything to do with that, I'll be mildly cross." The alert suggested retribution beyond bugs in their beds or annoyed looks. Bucky knew Natasha's displeasure could take unusual forms days after the offense, and he raised his hands wordlessly to ward her off.

She took up a seat across from Clint, facing a tall bank of monitors arranged into a honeycombed circle of sorts. The data displays scrolled past on several, while a few showed blank black screens or error messages. The pair moved like dancers in a technological waltz, calling up screens and monitoring breach notification reports dotted in red and yellow rows bricked many columns high.

Clint mouthed, "Run," and jabbed the chopsticks deep into the fried chicken. He stuffed a ball in his mouth, somehow juggling the mouse in one hand and the chopsticks in the other.

Despite the disruptions, the two spies adopted an easy rhythm borne of familiarity. A twinge of jealousy smoldered in Bucky's heart, another sign of pride bruised and battered into a questionable lump. He and Stark operated almost as smoothly once upon a time. He missed the casual banter from a workstation in the corner, where Tony would invariably execute fifteen scans at once to show the other mortals his genius and superiority. They risked pelting one another with sarcastic asides and the occasional crab rangoon, all in good spirits.

Here, he was an interloper. His teammates didn't have to say anything for him to feel that resistance much like the wall, an invisible pushback marking a boundary to prohibit him from moving unnoticed somewhere he didn't below.

 _Damn if it doesn't hurt_.

"You have any data for me, Barton, or do I need to buddy up to you with a rolling chair?" A poor attempt at a wisecrack, but one that might pass. He met the wry grin from Clint and lowered his hand onto the back of an unoccupied office chair to reinforce his threat with some teeth.

Clint stiffened up again, losing his casual slouch. He slid down the curved desk and prodded a mouse, causing two dormant screens to flash alight. Pale blue outlines rimmed the margins of continents, and bright scarlet dots flared over the coastal margins of the Australian west coast, the southern rim of Southeast Asia, the US northeast, and a messy scattering throughout eastern Europe. "We've been trying to isolate where the attacks originate from. At least the big ones that try to compromise Friday and leave our data open. I don't care anything about random password changes or slowing down data transmission."

"A smoke screen," Bucky said.

"You got it. The last cluster of attacks came out of these vicinities. I've homed in on two likely locations here, in Australia and I think Malaysia. The other possibilities are giving me a headache, so lend a hand. Capturing the data has been rough with Friday trying to fend off the hackers. They keep inserting information and deleting their tracks, as well as our monitoring."

"I've had to reinstall the tracking parameters three times," Nat said, not looking up from the string of data. "Whoever is doing this hid their real intentions behind a brute force assault. Based on the patterns, the hackers targeted our communications and travel data for the past couple of days."

Travel data and communications gave the super soldier an easy answer. "Looking for leads to where we're going. Any missions in progress or on the docket. Plenty convenient to know when we plan on leaving the nest if they want to attack, or arrange a welcoming party at our destination. We can always revert to paper and pen as a short-term solution," Bucky said. "It won't help for incoming communication but it at least gives a layer of defense. They can't keep cameras on us all the time."

Natasha nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear as several fiery tresses slipped free and slapped her cheek. "Finding our schedules and whereabouts is my primary theory. They have a target and a need to know where he will be." Her use of he caught Bucky's attention and he narrowed his frosty eyes imperceptibly. "Never mind the security risk if our enemies know where we intend to go. The searches were hardly random. They're targeting something."

"You think they haven't found what they were looking for? They keep coming back, I take it."

"Unless they want to be sure they have our latest dance card, it makes sense. They know we aren't stupid and we keep sniffing for changes. Our targets are professional and using elaborate techniques to penetrate the systems. Even at full capacity we barely detect the intrusions and manage to keep ahead," she said.

Someone pushing two seasoned cryptography experts to their limits and wrecking Friday's functionality left painfully few likely targets. Bucky pushed away the possibility for the meantime. Not even Tony could be everywhere.

"Do we have enough to shut down the attacks? Barton, you have targets. Are they viable to strike? Additional intel on who or what they are? If we can pull the plug, that puts them on the defensive."  
Midway through shoveling fried rice into his mouth, Clint hurried to swallow. He choked and spluttered on the sticky grains, and covered the lower half of his face with his sleeve. Sunken eyes and day-old growth showed his definite lack of sleep. "I've got physical locations, sure. Corresponding those to any known criminal entities through our databases was the easy part, especially when Nat identified which records were tampered with. We've got an office building in Perth and a hardcore setup in Singapore. A private apartment, like the whole building, super luxurious sort of place. You know they've got a private museum in there? Galleries, vaults, the whole shebang."

Natasha rolled her eyes, pausing with her fingers poised over a keyboard. "That impresses you? A museum? You've seen car collection at Stark's place and the art he keeps all over our building."  


"Both well-defended, then," Bucky said.

Pepper's collection for the most part still decorated the Manhattan Tower. The acquisitions nearly stopped after her death. Tony could hardly bring himself to meet with the gallery owners and specialists from auction houses eager to part him from his cash. Another hidden sorrow in their lives, papered over by always looking forward. He missed Pepper, her steady hands and capable behaviour in every storm, even though his return paved the way for a slowly blossoming relationship with Tony.

He would have given about anything for her to walk through carrying a latte and a practical solution to their dilemma.

"Hey, Earth to Barnes. You still with us?" Clint waved his arm in broad arcs. Bucky snapped his attention to the waving, and nodded sharply. "Good, I was starting to think you were going into killer mode again with your thousand yard stare. If you're going to do that, kindly do so on the news."

A warning noise chimed low in Natasha's throat. "Barton, you're pushing your luck."

"Australia. Tony's second nanotech lab is in Perth." Bucky paused and frowned to himself. His knowledge was out of date by months, years in some cases, despite running through the computer and files Steve provided. "Was. I don't know if it was still active."

"What? We had _nothing_ on file about a second nanotech lab." Clint threw down his chopsticks and practically dove headfirst into the data. "You got anything for Singapore? Scratch that, we know Singapore is a legitimate target."

Three screens flipped over to new maps. Cities blossomed on two, and a third revealed a stretch of Interstate crawling through mountains and plains. Contour lines filled in the details and overlaid names winked atop the landscapes. Natasha checked each one. "Bratislava, Sofia, or Nevada. They mean anything to you?"

Dread inked its way down the super soldier's spine. Perspiration anointed his brow, and he took a moment to steady himself before he chanced a reply. Clint might overlook the hesitation buried deep in his voice, or at least spare him a question. The Black Widow was another matter altogether. She noticed everything.

"HYDRA had a facility in the Nevadan desert disguised as a large factory. A fair bit outside Las Vegas. They do their transactions there and sold data storage to different groups. I know it draws an enormous amount of power," he said. "Nothing stands out for Sofia or Bratislava. I'm sorry."

The two spies gave one another a long look. Starting to speak, Clint thought the better and yielded the floor, gesturing at Nat.

"HYDRA in a Vegas data center. You're sure." Her hand hovered over a key, awaiting on him.

Always the questions of certainty. If Steve were in the room, she might not ask about his remembrance, any more than Clint. But Steve wasn't and Bucky resisted any urge to call in his best friend. His authority stood on fragile foundations, and falling back on Steve wasn't going to build any faith in him.

He coughed. "My memories aren't scrambled. I went to the data center two or three times. You should know it's absolutely huge. The building covers multiple city blocks, all on one level." Staring off at the map, he gestured to the block of white along a highway. "There, the largest structure in that industrial park. But I'm not totally sure about Tony having a lab in Perth. He might have wrapped it up or expanded."  

"Ask Friday," Nat said. "She's voice protected against us attempting to extract that information. Whether Tony deliberately set that up to prevent us from knowing his business or it's a result of the hacking, I don't know."

"Wait, why do you think I might have authorization?"

"He didn't keep his secrets from you." The redhead didn't smile; her voice traced a softer course than Bucky thought he deserved.

"Your codes were out of date and freezered after you went AWOL, old protocol. If the cyberattack failed to get into the encrypted backups, you'll still be active," Clint said.

Bucky licked his lips. He still felt strange directly addressing the artificial intelligence protocols left by Tony. Talking to machines like they were humans blurred the boundaries a little more than he cared, a point of contention and ribbing from his lover. Call him old-fashioned for preferring someone he could see and touch, expressions originating from a human brain instead of a glitchy program.

He cleared his throat. "Friday, checking in. Give me a status report."

"Hello, Mr. Barnes." The AI's warm, cheerful feminine voice appeared to originate directly in front of him. He startled slightly and her volume tapered off a notch. "I am currently experiencing a twenty percent slowdown over the network and my translation core abilities are non-functional due to a cyberattack originating from multiple botnets. Breaches are currently focused on Please refrain from accessing sensitive information unless absolutely essential and follow operations security protocols."

Great, being warned not to go trawling. He clutched the back of the chair, his shoulders tight underneath his shirt. The cotton pulled at his collarbone and along his chest.

"Friday, access any files on the nanotech development project, Doctor Cho, or Bleeding Edge." Bucky drowned any doubt deep in his soul. This tested whether Stark believed him dead after their separation. Had his lover consigned his memory to the dustbin of history, something in the past, unshackled from any hope of a reunion. "Does he still have a facility in Perth?"

"The laboratory is in Technology Park in Perth, Australia." Friday confirmed their question, refining a dot onto the radiating beacon on the map. The two points overlapped precisely, a darker spot within the general beacon.

"Well shit," Clint said.

The archer tried not to stare, but he kept checking Bucky's position every few minutes. Finally he sighed loud enough to drown out the background noise of the air conditioning. "Come on, roll on over here and get to work. So far I've knocked out the zombie networks and let Friday focus on tracing origins. When I clear out the mess of data, we can concentrate on Perth and Singapore. Nat, you get Nevada, if you can? We gotta know what we're flying into."

"We?" Bucky asked quietly.

"You didn't think you were going it alone, did you?" Nat rolled her chair back, the casters clattering across the linoleum floor. "That's a great way to be outmanned and outplanned."

He was speechless, merely shaking his head.

With a dramatic sigh, Clint thrust the container of crab rangoon at Bucky. "Come on, eat up. I need a right-hand man sometimes, and you'll do just fine. One question, you gonna wear your old get-up or sneak around in a military jacket?"

Bucky took the takeout container in numb fingers. "I'm taking the shield."

"Good, that solves that. HYDRA won't know what the hell hit them. I mean," Clint amended his own statement, "they will because it's a vibranium shield, but not _who_ hit them."

"Clint? Shut up. We've got work to do." Natasha shook her head. "We'll bring Stark home. Just you wait."

* * *

Bucky stared at the tall blue locker, his arms crossed. The same scene prepping for a mission played a hundred times before. Only one moment compared to this one.

Two days after Steve's memorial, nineteen hours after the attorney breezed in to up end his life, he stood here refusing to spin the dial on the lock. Then Tony talked him through the simple act of entering the combination and suiting up. Acerbic, grief-stricken Tony made the process harsh and unforgiving. He tripped anger and duty, overcoming the self-recrimination left by opening and reading Steve's will.

He didn't have Tony now to reassure him that taking the shield and wearing the uniform was the right path. His own moral compass was hopelessly busted, and possibly fatally damaged after his run-in with HYDRA. He sat there, arms crossed over his broad chest, staring at the locker.

The locker glared back. Shadows crept across the floor.

He heard the footsteps descending the stairs into the room long before anyone appeared. Easy to distinguish the light patter of Clint's hasty gait from Natasha's fluid, silenced way of walking. Knowing who else occupied this wing of the building, he was prepared, standing against the wall, when Steve breezed in.

He wore his brown leather coat, beaten to hell and slouching in a shapeless mass off his shoulders. His dusty blue helmet hung at his side from his belt.

"You're going to miss your flight. Need a lift to the airport?" Steve asked.

Bucky shook his head.

"You can say no. This isn't a life sentence. Going out is a choice, not a command."

He couldn't bring himself to smile. "I gave Stark a life sentence. Question is whether justice arrives in time to offer him a reprieve."

Steve lay his hand over Bucky's shoulder, gripping his upper arm in a firm, solid grasp. "You know that isn't true. Your doubts speak, not your heart."

"I don't know I can stay on the path that leads to being a better person. You saw how that turned out." Bucky hung his head, the loose weight of his hair slipping out from under his collar. "I thought I could. Maybe, this one, I could pick up the shield." He held out his empty, shaking hands as proof. "Stevie, I'm weak. Lives are on the line."

Quirking a faint grin, the blond captain laid his other hand on Bucky's vibranium shoulder, feeling the distributed plates underneath. "A man corrupted by HYDRA would never show about doubts or weakness. He could talk about it, but he wouldn't feel it inside. You're hurting. I can feel it."

"I tricked you before. Whatever acting I learned in the Soviet Union is a pale shadow to what the nanites could do with me. They controlled what I did, what I said." Bucky's eyes widened, showing rings of white. He backed up against the wall, pulling Steve with him. "You don't know. Even now I could be playing you. Classic honeypot move--"

"Except I'm not your lover, and we already scanned you every way to Sunday to assure you were clean. If the nanites went dormant, they wouldn't escape Friday. She checks you regularly."

A stuttering response slid into silence. Bucky worked his jaw and his shoulders ratcheted back. "You're saying I'm clean. How sure can you be? They're smart bastards to get through Tony's security."

"Smart, but we've got better technology and we know you." Steve hugged him close, clapping his hand on Bucky's back. "You have this. Go out and save Tony. The Avengers need you, and heck, I need you." A gleam burned in his eyes. "You might be the last person on earth able to keep his ego from getting any bigger."

A choked laugh peppered Steve's shoulder. Bucky stood up straighter. "You know how to give a hell of a pep talk. Remind me never to face you without my ears full of wax."

"I'd write it out for you. Got some experience with flash cards, you know." Steve thumped lightly on the locker and the door swung open, hinges moaning. A dark suit hung from the hook, dark boots and a plethora of ceramic-plated armour hidden on shelves in separate compartments. The narrow edge of a round shield caught the light. "We've got your old suit ready to go, freshly pressed. So suit up and get out there. Your team is waiting."

"Our team." Bucky gripped Steve's forearm, looking him dead on. "You're as much the leader as I am, even if you're retired."

"You've got it. And not much of a retirement, sitting around here babysitting the AI." Friday most certainly heard that. The blond winked. "She has most things under control. I'll make sure no one invades the home front."

A one man army, Steve Rogers. Bucky didn't envy anyone foolish enough to try to take him on. He reached into the locker, grabbing the bundles of armour and the navy uniform. "Thank you. For everything."

Steve gave him an additional nudge. "Go assemble your Avengers."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	13. Perth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First stop for trouble: the Australian West Coast and the first glimpse of Bucky Barnes as Captain America in action with his team of Avengers.

"Perth?" Clint groaned over the controls, the web of buckles holding him in. "You waited until we were midair to tell me to plug in Australia as our destination? Nevada is right over there." He waved his gauntleted arm vaguely ahead of him. "We could be in Nevada in an hour."

Bucky tilted his head. The reinforced cap took some getting used to. He tolerated the slight muffling of sounds. In a way, he appreciated how the helmet took the edge off his acute hearing.

"Perth has closer proximity to Singapore. We already know the basic layout of the facility," he said.

Natasha kept her mouth shut, a smirk painting her lips, denting little dimples at the corners of her cheeks that Bucky decided never to tell her about. They might mysteriously vanish.

Clint's face crumpled rather like biting into a lemon. "Yeah, but it's eleven thousand miles that way. It's practically the antipodes."

"Actually, it is. The antipodal point for New York is a few hundred miles southwest of Perth." Bucky strapped into a seat and pulled up the schematics. "If you wanted a faster route, you shouldn't have ticked off the wizard."

Clint tightened his fingers around the handle. "How was I supposed to know he's sensitive about his hands? Fine, I'll plug it in while you guys get to take a nap."

Bucky highly doubted he could find any way to sleep strapped in, running on an elephantine dose of adrenaline. His old air legs were coming back faster than he anticipated. The Quinjet trimmed off in the thermal, rising smoothly after a few initial bumps.

"I'll check the security logs and pull any relevant data." Natasha looked confident and comfortable beside the archer, handling a tablet and a screen on the jet with equal ease. He doubted she needed either of them to storm the technology centre by herself.

Blueprints and access logs proved the perfect cocktail to send him plunging into sleep. The serum kept him awake and ticking for long stretches, often surpassing forty-eight hours without adverse reactions. He could push himself to seventy-two as necessary, catching short catnaps. But dozing off in the Quinjet? That never happened.

Until it did. Bucky blinked away sleep from his eyes, squinting against the expected sunlight. Instead, endless indigo shadows unfurled before the Quinjet. Interior lights dimmed to their lowest settings added a twinkle of soft light. Clint snored quietly in his seat, a stack of papers in his lap, while Natasha steered the craft over the blackened terrain far below. Few lights pricked the streets, a fuzzy glimmer picking out the shore.

Rubbing the sand from his eyes with his flesh palm, Bucky gained his bearings from the screen. "We're already in the southern hemisphere?"

"Thirty miles out and closing. I'll have to set the bird down. We've got clearance to land at the airport," Natasha said, her words soft and hushed to keep from waking the archer.

"We can't exactly drop the jet on the warehouse, can we?"

She raised her shoulder in a crooked angle, rolling it back under her open black jacket. He watched while she pulled herself taller, doing magnificent things to her catsuit. "The building would support it, but I'm not sure the police would agree."

He gestured at a sweep of green open space on the map beside their target. The beacon light burned green. "Why not right there? It's a park."

"A sports complex with the Quinjet in the middle?" She raised her eyebrows, doubt painted in clear lines.

"You think anyone will be playing there at night?" He checked the time. 4:30 AM, hours before the spring sun dawned over the horizon. "That gives us a two-hour window to get in and out. More than sufficient to shut down anyone inside. It could be the analysts don't even know they are running corrupted code or have a backdoor open right now."

She pushed the Quinjet into a controlled descent, focusing on the sports fields. "Any damage to the field comes out of your pay cheque." He nodded and the joke was on Nat. He wasn't on the official payroll yet. No need to warn her about that yet. Fleeting clouds spilled past them in curls of silver. "Let's review. We go in on the ground, clear the security system. That's my job."

He nodded. "Barton will give you cover and I can take care of any of the guards on duty. This late, they shouldn't have more than a skeleton crew."

"You get to manage any unexpected infestation. Ten minutes, tops. Then we start clearing our way to the laboratory?" she asked.

He frowned. Clearing the building made sense, but took precious time. Standard operating procedure said sweep every floor. They had spent thirty minutes flying from New York debating the finer points of making the effort. "Soon as we unbuckle the cyber attack from here, we'll alert Nevada and Singapore. We maximize every second of that window by striking the laboratory, reclaiming any of Stark's nanotech and getting the hell out of here."

"I don't like leaving our backs open. I can handle myself," she said. The craft skimmed above rooftops and apartments swaddled in darkness, headed for the rectangular bullseye of the park. "Send Clint down from the roof."

"Splitting up is a terrible idea," he said.

"Splitting the targets was a terrible idea. I don't see we have better options."   

Problem was, he and Natasha made excellent points. Damned if they do, damned if they didn't. He unstrapped himself and gave the archer a gentle shake. "Come on, time to hit the deck. When we down, we close in on the technology park. Natasha follows the plan. You're coming with me."

Clint took a few seconds to grasp what was being said, and he smirked. "Aww, Barnes, you could have just said you wanted to work with me. You'll make a great sidekick." He stretched his arms over his head and leaned back. "See, Romanova, that's Bucky-speak for he missed me."

Bucky was pleased his admirable restraint held through not punching Clint in the nose. The smug grin dimmed when the Quinjet spun and dropped onto the grass. Engines still popped and hissed when they unbuckled, and Bucky plucked the round shield from its place of honour on the wall. The solid weight hung easily on his gloved forearm, thick straps all but conformed to the powerful muscles. His glove creaked when he tested the heft and feel.

"Look, I know it's exciting to carry that, but try to hold back from flinging the Frisbee as soon as we get outside," Clint said as he passed by, smacking the button to lower the ramp. A bow clasped in hand, his stash of arrows jutting out over his shoulder, he looked far more dangerous than Natasha. "I don't know if the building will try to incinerate us. This is Tony we're talking about."

Bucky curled his lip. "In a civilian population, he's not going to incinerate a building."

"Stark might not but believe me. Truth and Reconciliation is the tip of a fanatical iceberg that doesn't much care about civilians. If it's HYDRA like you and Rogers think, we need to be careful."

Clint's point taken, Bucky nodded. He lifted the shield to rest on the cradle on his back. His harness felt a bit tight, and the suit alien, but he started into a jog. The old muscles loosened up. The mission called, and he always adopted a laser focus in the moment.

They closed on the squat three-story building devoid of any redeeming features. Concrete blocks sprouted out of the tidy pavement, a row of short, clipped bushes alleviating the ponderous weight. Floodlights washed over the numbers mounted on a sign, no other evidence of the companies occupying the place. A lack of windows except for two darkened panes beside the front door ent an air of cheerless gloom Bucky found reminiscent of Soviet architecture. He didn't like the place.

Clint raised a nocked arrow to the door as Bucky and Natasha closed in. Getting in proved the easy part. She used a printed key in the lock and a manufactured ID card. When the system started protesting, the initial green lights shining and winking out, Bucky rammed his fist into the pad. The lock snicked back as the power failed.

"Some security," Clint said. They swept into the lobby together.

Within seconds, Nat vanished into the shadowy corridor of a small foyer. They memorized their routes, and Bucky led the way to the second wing. They found the glowing Exit sign and paused in front of a fire door. He drew a breath and nudged the door open, finding a stairwell bathed in darkness except for a distant, buzzing light. He gestured over his shoulder, and the archer crept in after.

Like old times. They strained to hear any variations, a click of a door or footsteps. Bucky counted down from four hundred, and when he reached zero, he descended the stairs. The shield rode his arm, its telltale face turned to the wall. They switchbacked into the belly of the lab, bypassing a floor of offices. He strained to catch a subtle click conveyed over the speaker as he crouched next to the fire door on another level. Clint stood a flight of stairs higher, pointing an arrow straight down.

The tap was their signal to go. He drew the door back a fraction and hurled a magnetic mine down the hall. It bounced off the walls and detonated in a powerful magnetic wave. Bucky lifted his shield and crept in, seeing nothing but ugly, nondescript artwork on the walls lying at crooked angles.

Something smelled wrong on the air, an astringent note of cleaners lying over iron. Blood. He went flat to a wall, staring at the frosted glass doors leading into the lab. Clint fell in behind him.

"I'm going to have kick that down," Bucky said.

Exchanging his needle-point arrow for one with a broad, wide head, the archer lifted his bow. From draw to release took two seconds, almost as fast as the soldier could stretch out an arm to stop him. Bucky held his palm up as the arrow penetrated the solid reinforced glass and shattered the sheet in a pile of crumbling cubes.

Clint grinned. "Skip the pleasantries and let's go."

"Did anyone ever teach you about subtlety in SHIELD?"

"Sure, it's one less thing to worry about." Clint ducked back against the wall and Bucky raised his shield, dashing through the gap where the door stood. His boots crunched on the broken glass.

Dim lights glimmered around the vast, lobed laboratory. He thought it resembled more of a fantastic, spotless factory floor imagined by Stanley Kubrick than Tony Stark. Functional equipment encased in polished white plastic and enamel lurched over long trays. Robotic arms folded up neatly from ceiling mounts hung over cradles. Clear cubes printed out 3D objects behind a wall displaying a constant temperature in the corner. Computers arranged in a cross stood in the middle of the room, overshadowing a gentleman with a pistol left in arm's reach.

The absence of employees bothered Bucky less than the four people actually present. He disregarded the two younger men as the source of the cyberattack. Rather more concerning were two men covering the rear entrance to the lab and the front one, both standing out of direct line of fire. He immediately recognized their Kevlar vests and bulky holsters. Higher-risk threats immediately.

Their machine guns barked from the corners. Mechanical arms shielded the nearer man, a short, stocky thug. He raised the shield and sprinted for the thug. Chattering bullets carved a descending line as the crew-cut man aimed for Bucky's legs. A few bullets wouldn't slow him down, but he preferred not to be hit.

He hooked his foot under an office chair and kicked it at the corner. Shooting stopped, as he expected it would. Bipedal creatures, even seasoned soldiers, protected their eyes from flying objects. As he expected, the stocky shooter raised an arm to ward off the airborne chair.

The heavy casters smashed into the metal cranes. Wires swayed and the back of the chair hit the wall. Bucky grabbed both metal housings. He punched them into the shorter thug, slamming the jointed robotic arms against flesh.

A chorus of pained grunts erupted into the laboratory. Gloved hands seized the cranes and tore them free of the ceiling. The thug's face contorted as he punched the mass into Bucky.

"Duck!" Clint shouted. The warning sent the super soldier into a crouch, knocking the ruined equipment to the floor.

A brown-haired hacker ducked flat, his fingers still skittering across the keyboard. "It's Captain America," he hissed in alarm to his companion.

The other gunman in the corner saw his opportunity, squeezing off more shots. The archer snapped an arrow in his direction and the resulting collision threw gelatinous goo across the glossy walls and floor. Strands covered the larger shooter, pinning him down. He tore at the calcifying webs that coated him.

"That's new." Bucky slammed his shield up to cover himself, bullrushing into the stocker gunman trying to fire again. Bullets chattered into the ceiling and floor, deflected by the vibranium. The starry boss crashed into the thug, pinning him to the wall.

Turning his head, Clint fired another arrow at the gangly hacker trying to rush for the far door, setting off a brilliant flash of light. "You like it? I got the idea from this Japanese cartoon."

"Not Spider-Man?" Bucky grunted, leaning in to pin the shorter thug.

"No way." Clint pointed an arrow at the dazed hacker sprawling on the ground. He didn't smile. "Hey, griefer! Get your hands in the air and keep your ass on the floor. Nice and easy now. Captain Oblivious over there, get away from the computer."  

Captain Oblivious, dressed all in black, cursed under his breath. He lingered by the workstation until the archer drew back on the string. The arrow trained straight at the abstract grey logo on his chest. Dropping back to the floor, he scrambled sideways.

Across the room, Bucky struggled with the shorter shooter. Blood rimmed the thug's mouth, his teeth lurid red as his lips pulled back in a snarl. A low vibrating sound rolled out of his throat. For good measure, Bucky kneed the thug in the groin where he was sure the body armour provided minimal protection.

Bucky's knee sank deep, the force lifting the man several inches up. The shield's rim cracked the gun barrel back into his face, gouging a shallow cut. Blood leaked down from the shrinking slice as it knit back together.

Dammit. The shooters must have nanites in their systems. That explained the fast healing, and the punch throwing Bucky halfway across the room.

He rolled as he landed, tumbling noisily until he crashed into a wall. "They're enhanced!"

The thug came running across the lab at him. Bucky kipped up to meet the bull rush.

Both the hackers struggled to their feet. Clint shot ahead of them, detonating another flash bang that washed a blast of sharp illumination over the room. The explosive dazzle blinded him through his shut eyes and turned face, but he smirked when they toppled.

Reacting on instinct, Bucky fought his way blind. He blocked an uppercut to his chin and swung his shield up, landing a hard kick and two quick punches with his metal fist. The stocky man absorbed the impact and crashing into the earth, shaking off his broken ribs. The fight wasn't looking especially good.

Bucky unleashed a roundabout kick when the thug bashed a punch at his head. The sweep took the thug down, his hunched body crashing down onto Captain America like a load of bricks. A follow up punch left cracks in the floor, and the nanites closed the scrapes and broken flesh.

The nanotechnology couldn't do a damn thing about the black-clad woman leaping onto his back. Her additional weight and momentum pressed the thug flat to Bucky's side. He slammed his metal fingers into the smooth floor, pulling himself out as ozone filled the air and she discharged electricity from her gauntlets into the stocky man's body.

Scrambling for footing, Bucky ran to the dangling wires that supported the fallen mechanical arms. He hauled them over, ripping out the ceiling tiles. Stripping the plastic coating was easy and he rammed the bare ends into the thug for the extra damage.

"What made you think of electricity?" he said.

Nat let go and the unconscious thug dropped to the ground. "It's how we put you down."

He grimaced, sliding the shield back over his shoulder into its leather and metal cradle. The weight settled in naturally. He'd forgotten how comfortable the disk felt in place. "Let's get the other three secured. That thug in the corner is going to be a problem."

With Clint guarding the hackers, he and Natasha moved over to the shooter tearing his way out of the hardened webs. A shock of electricity from Black Widow's bracers ended his struggles. They bound him and the three other men to office chairs, while Clint called the police.

The trio swiftly moved through the laboratory to the cold chamber. As chilly air puffed over Bucky, he shuddered involuntarily. Too many memories crowded close, memories of frosty windows and struggling to breathe. Natasha squeezed his hand in passing, and then settled in front of several locked cabinets.

"Take the ones in grey plastic housing," Bucky said. He grabbed a tray for the redhead dumped a handful of vials from the fridge, moving on to the next cube.

Clint kept watch over their prisoners, mouth crimped shut in displeasure. His agitation was clear. "How soon can we clear out?"

"Give me another minute," Natasha said. "Friday is still shutting down the network. Listen for the bird call, that's her sign when we're all clear."

Bucky slid the nanites into a pouch on his belt. "Did you find any sign of Stark?"  
"He's not hiding around a corner."

"Any of the other staff?"

She shook her head. "Not even a janitor. Place is clean and we've got that team attacking Friday from a secret Stark Industries facility."

"If we've got no other signs of life, time to get out of here. Time is running down."

A shattering rooster crow rolled over the laboratory from every speaker in sight. Bucky's head rang as the sound poured through him. He almost went to his knees, the quiver of soundwaves beating against his skull.

"Guess that's our signal," Clint shouted through the ringing in their ears.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	14. Singapore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lovers' quarrels created by HYDRA are the very worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MassiveSpaceWren's full art inspired the hinge point of this chapter. Bucky on his knees holding Iron Man's mask marks the moment from which the rest of the novel flowed outward while I was writing it. I feel so privileged to have a great piece like this to work an entire story from.

He led his team of spectres from nook to alcove, keeping to the darker pools. Maybe an hour remained before dawn, and the tropical nightfall was already in full retreat. Ghostly, blank-eyed statues watched their departure impassively, holding the secrets of the breached security to themselves.

After Natasha disabled the security systems, Bucky immediately took charge. He predicted trouble after Steve relayed the contents of a text message received by Stark Industries' reception desk. Somewhere ahead of them among the artistic touches lay Helen Cho, held at gunpoint by a loyal cadre of mercenaries.

Bucky didn't know who the mercenaries worked for, and he cared little. As he slipped out of cover into a small foyer, he seemed to stroll across a wooden bridge in a forest glade, rather than into a death trap.

Clint watched transfixed on his mute approach, trying to read every gesture. His bow trained a silent bullseye across the sunken floor, skimming up the walls.

The familiar tension slipped into focus. Bucky knew Clint lay in the shadows, but he lost track of Natasha as soon as he left cover. Every deliberate step brought him to the centerpiece of the tower, the double doors that opened onto private vaults. Somewhere beyond the fire-proofed, double-layered metal core lay the stolen nanites created by Tony Stark.

Even with his shield, bashing through the doors might take an hour or two. Certainly long enough for the elite clientele of Tomlinson Tower or the agents of the Singapore Trade Freeport to realize their priceless artifacts were at risk. They might hurry faster if they knew the breach originated with a dead man, rather than the Tong or Interpol or half a dozen other authorities.

Lucky for him, he had the vibranium arm. Doors intended to withstand a blast or direct strike by a fast moving vehicle relied on blunt force. He, however, merely used his vibranium fingers to start hammering and clawing around the seam where they met. Using the shield as a blunt force object smashing through the seam raised an unholy amount of noise.

Hence Nat lurking in reach, and Clint pinning down the main entrance. Bucky poured his rage and fear into every determined hit. Quite a bit different from his days as the Winter Soldier, when he acted like an automaton, emptied of emotion.

 _Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony_.

Every impact resonated with his lost love's name. Every shriek of metal sang an homage to his recovery effort.

_Tony. Tony._

"Barnes!" A low call rolled through the havoc wreaked on the doors. He saw light on the other side, the ragged tear opened enough that Bucky could almost thrust his prosthetic arm through. Glancing back at Clint, he raised the shield to cover his face and torso out of habit.

Reflex saved his life.

Two brutal wedges formed out of floating spheres that shot through the room. One turned into a jagged projectile eight inches long, thicker than a knife blade, and rammed into the shield. He deflected the shard behind him where it clattered harmlessly. A curl of blue paint hit the ground by Bucky's boots.

"You're going to pay for that. You think I can get the dye from Home Depot?" A snarl curved his lips.

Natasha shot twice and knocked the other projectile off course. It ran into the shield door, embedded to the hilt. The blunt end reformed into a growing splinter extruded from the gouged steel.

"Nanites," he called out in warning, recoiling in a hasty retreat. The wiser part of valour brought him closer to Clint to regroup.

How the hell could they fight nanites? No one could toe-to-toe them, and he feared the tiny robots finding their way through the lamellar of his arm. Their best recourse might be electricity or nanotech armour, but they didn't have that.

Only Tony did. Secondary options then.

"Clint, tell me Friday reprogrammed these in Perth?" The pouch at his waist shook.

Clint hastily switched arrows for one with a fat metallic tip pear-shaped in design. It looked more like a rocket-propelled grenade in miniature to Bucky than an arrow, but what did he know about archery?

"I don't know if she deactivated them or swept them fully. Kinda hard when the cyberattack out of Nevada was trying to disassemble her at the time."

Bucky grit his teeth. "I'm not seeing a lot of options other than fire and electricity here."

"Remember how the Avengers don't blow buildings up?" Clint reminded him with a bit of a smirk, though he tensed up. Natasha sprung through the foyer, clutching her arm. Blood flowed out of a cut in her sleeve, a thin red line.

"Someone doesn't want us going through those doors," the brown-haired soldier said. He snapped his shield as hard as his prosthetic arm allowed past another of the buzzing devices. He had no idea how the nanites got airborne, like tiny drones, and had no intention of finding out.

Nat rolled to cover behind a statue, and the marble arm crashed down on her as another nanite spike tried to chase her down. Pain framed her expression behind the white mask.

"Light it up!" Bucky shouted over his shoulder, dashing to claim the shield. He was effectively without cover and far slower than the flowing machines joining into a larger shape, but the nanites failed to penetrate the vibranium shield once. He had to hope for a second round.

A whining noise ripped out behind him and the arrow struck the ceiling. An invisible wave burst out, propelled by crumbled silicate dust and white-hot embers that quickly died out. Lights failed in a burst. The faint murmur of jazz from the hall crackled and cut out. Bucky seized the shield from the sealed doors and hauled it out, his grip on the exposed two inches slipping despite the gloves.

Metal rained down in a fine patter, grains too small to see falling apart from clumps. Clint's jaw hung on the floor and Natasha limped out from cover.

"They're down," she said, crushing the remaining clumped nanites under her heel.

"Damn. Am I good or am I good?" Clint still stared at the room.

Bucky shoved his arm through the break in the doors and hauled on the one besieged attack. Magnets resisted him but they were far less effective without electricity feeding into them. The door dragged open, shrieking all the way. "How many of those you got?"

"Two." The archer's grin slipped. "One on the Quinjet."

"So we've got one shot," Bucky said.

Natasha dashed forward into the opened gap into the vault and stifled a quiet moan. It wasn't customary for her to vocalize dismay or sorrow on a mission. She saved her emotions for the appropriate time, a sun-drenched beach and a potent vodka-based cocktail.

"What?" Pulling himself free of the door, Bucky dashed around the front and saw the slumped woman lying against a stained crate. She faced away from them, her wrist burned a livid red.

He reached the body seconds after Natasha did. The redhead slipped her fingers under the woman's jaw, and offering a slow shake of her head. "No pulse."

"Cho?" He didn't truly need to ask. He rolled the black-haired woman onto her back, and stared at her confused, pained expression. Empty eyes held no light or agony. He swept his fingertips over her eyelids to offer her a fraction of dignity.

It hurt. Slowly and steadily someone destroyed Tony's legacy. He remembered the nanites at his belt, likely disabled or ruined by Clint's EMP arrow. Here, they found Cho.

"Barnes." Natasha's voice trailed off, pain tight in her throat. He looked where she pointed.

A starburst burned through Cho's damp blouse. He pushed aside the singed edges reluctantly. Burns radiated out from the massive trauma that staved in her chest, cooking flesh, burning organs beneath. He knew the pattern as intimately as his own metal fingers.

A repulsor beam.

His voice growled a command. "Evacuate, now."

Clint's head shot up, and he said, "We just can't leave her here."

Bucky reached down to scoop up Cho's corpse. She hadn't settled into rigor mortis yet, and her skin still felt somewhat warm. He started into a march for the doors, leaving Nat limping behind.

"But the attack. We don't know if Clint knocked out the servers," she said. "I can go back and be sure."

"Figure it out from the Quinjet. Your priority is getting aboard and getting out of here." Every step drove Bucky closer to a jog, regardless of the woman's body bouncing limp behind him.

Clint shadowed him, not quite swiveling in front of his way. "I get you're upset, but spending a few minutes now saves us a trip or a nasty exploit hitting later on. Truth and Reconciliation knows we're onto them."

"This isn't about Truth and Reconciliation," he said.

Natasha soldiered on. He respected her for that, managing her pain without complaint. Anger burned in her flickering eyes, drowning the sorrow. She kept up as they swung through a hallway, past the art. "What are we dealing with, then?"

Bucky licked salt from his lips. His breaths ran shallow and quick, too much. "Tony. Or someone with Tony's suits."

"Shit." Beside him, Clint broke into a run and pulled out another arrow.

Bucky forced himself into a faster jog. Clint might be quick, but he could outrun the archer ten times over if things came right down to it. "Get back. We're done if we split up."

They didn't like his decision and he booked no argument. He felt urgency press him faster than might be wise. They slowed only at intersections, crawling up the stairs two at a time, Clint at some points scooping his arm under Nat's shoulders and lifting her up the stairs.

They reach the landing before the rooftop exit, and Bucky laid Doctor Cho's body on the ground. The shield easily came to his arm. Ahead, the door appeared particularly malevolent, the last barrier between the team and relative freedom.

"Clint, can you give cover for Nat to make the jet?"

Bucky turned to face them. Natasha leaned on the wall, wrapping a scrap of gauze around her bleeding arm. As tourniquets went, it made for a fairly amateur effort. He helped her tie off the knot, face impassive when the poppy red stain grew along the slash. The nanite blade clearly hurt her.

He moved to guard the door and nodded to them. Clint shifted into position, ready to bolt, the redhead overshadowed by his broader size.

Steeling himself, Bucky threw the door open and dashed out at a full run. He raised the shield as he split for the edge of the helipad away from the Quinjet.

A volley of blasts left smoking crafters in his wake. He sprang sideways, rolling hard off his shoulder and rising into a sprint. Another spray of concrete shrapnel rolled over him, chunks rebounding harmlessly off his shoulder. He spun around and raised his shield as a defensive wall from the last blast aimed at his shoulders.

Energy poured off the shield in a ripple of blue-white light. The heat left the hair on the nape of his neck rising.

He dared a look over the shield's edge, and swore when the man in cherry red armour levitating twenty feet over the helipad turned. Even at a full sprint, Clint didn't stand a chance of reaching the Quinjet. Nat might make it, doggedly bolting for the cover of the wing.

The other choice -- damage to the jet itself -- was a non-starter. Better to pull the suit to his level than risk permanent damage. He measured the angle and threw the shield. It banked off the entryway and ricocheted at the Iron Man suit.

Bucky saw the arc reactor flaring at the core, that unmistakable blue-white glow seared against the polished crimson breastplate. In that moment, his heart ceased to beat, the world ceased to exist. He faltered.

No mercenary piloted the armour. Even aided by the built-in AI, a neophyte wouldn't turn away so fast to miss the shield. The Iron Man armour swerved aside. Bucky pounded ahead and leapt ahead to capture the shield.

Natasha shouted aloud and snapped out a pistol, pointing them at the suit. She waited for a half-second, agonizingly slow, and squeezed off a shot. The bullet pinged off the breastplate in a shower of sparks. Another struck the metal housing of the arc reactor.

After her first two shots, she dashed sideways for the lowering ramp of the Quinjet. Clint barreled into her and carried her straight up. A burning ray ripped through the helipad, a sharp blast hitting the archer from behind. He cried out in pain, collapsing onto the ramp.

Bucky leapt over the wing, crashing down in a three-point landing. He whipped his shield up, giving coverage to the fallen archer.

"Get out of here!" he shouted over his shoulder.

For one, Natasha didn't argue. She hauled Clint by the arm and dragged him inside. The ramp belched and creaked, pulled up behind them. The brief, tense standoff between Bucky behind his shield and the floating figure of Iron Man gave them enough time to rise, but not enough to stop the diodes from firing up, glowing a deadly white.

"Don't," Bucky whispered. To no avail. Screaming them would do nothing more. What coverage the shield provided was only physical. Nothing spared him the sight of Tony on the other side of the fight.

It wasn't the same as the Winter Soldier. He felt grief and misery. The Winter Soldier's programming deadened doubt and fear. They only came later, welling up through the cracks until the drugs and pain came to sweep cares away.

Arms stretched out to target the Quinjet engine and the cockpit. The Iron Man suit hovered another five feet higher, twenty-five feet off the ground. One move and the energy burst would wing the bird or destroy the cockpit.

Bucky grit his teeth. "Tony." Please be Tony. Tony could be reasoned with. "Are you in there?"

The mask turned in his direction. Impossible to see through the eye slits, to know whether his lover even recognized him or registered a threat.

The irony wasn't lost on Bucky. He recognized Tony's suit but wasn't sure he was actually Tony. Did Stark see the red, white, and blue uniform, and question who the hell had the audacity to look like his dead love? His captain?

Soviet handlers thought love was a weakness. He thought they might be right, torn by indecision, hobbled by emotional agony. His feet slid wider, and he hinged back his arm.

The Iron Man suit focused on him, and the diode mounted in the armour's wrist pointed straight in Bucky's direction.

How had Steve faced him down, when he tried to pull his best friend apart limb from limb? He braced himself. "Tony, if you're in there, I won't let you hurt them. Stand down."

Another thing Steve excelled at. He gave better speeches, pep talks, and got violent men to lay down their weapons. Bucky grit his teeth at the Iron Man suit's impassive answer. The stand-off couldn't last forever.

"You know me, Stark. Look at me. Tell me you don't know me."

"Captain America." The answer cut over the low hum of the engines on the Quinjet. Static energy crackled on the air.

"Are you Stark? _"_ Bucky tilted his head higher. Buying for time must count for something. He had to trust in Nat or Clint finding an escape option. The Quinjet's shields might absorb two hits from Tony, but not more.

Iron Man hung there in the sky, the second coming of a vicious saint. "Who else looks this good?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Funny, I was wondering the same thing." The same cocky attitude, the sly tone to the voice, pointed to Tony. It wouldn't be easy to fake that, nor the supreme confidence of the facing Bucky and the team. "Breaking into buildings isn't really your style. Come on, Cap, let's make this simple. You put down that shield and agree to take a little walk."

 _What?_ Bucky faltered for a moment, anger stirring in his chest. Despair sank in his chest, refreshed by fresh outrage. "You think I broke in? You were here all along. What were you doing? Helen Cho is dead."

"Yeah, that's unfortunate. I thought I screened better for traitors." The repulsor flared and Bucky ducked behind the shield, another flare bursting off its surface. "Apparently I didn't. I'm going to have to take it personal."

The soldier on the ground snarled. He saw the faintest wisp of blond hair against the cockpit, the flick of metal. Clint was armed. Bucky took his chance and bolted, hurling the shield again. He lost cover, but not even Tony could handle four things at once perfectly.

Or, as it turned out, seventeen. Several pipes opened, shooting out brilliant flares that trailed foxfire over the tower. They swerved and ducked, throwing out clouds of opaque fog that stank to the high heavens. Not that the sensory array in Tony's suit would have any problem seeing through them, but he still spun, shooting the tiny missiles out of the air. His next shot crashed into the wing joint of the Quinjet, rocking it on its wheels. Bucky's shield crashed into the reforming blade forming out of Iron Man's sleeve.

He never thought about what might happen if Tony held onto the shield. Or if he threw it back. He slid under the wing for cover, hauling for the nearest air compressor. It made a good projectile, large and cumbersome enough to possibly knock Iron Man out of the sky.

He tore the aluminum shell free and hurled it at the floating red target. Shrapnel flew back at him as a contemptuous blast from Iron Man's repulsors obliterated the target.

 _Shit. Tony, what have you become?_ Any hope of a peaceful resolution, or calmly subduing Tony became downright impossible. He scrambled for something else to toss and heard the crackling of the Quinjet's guns. Orange explosions bloomed overhead and the backdraft from the engines firing straight down knocked Bucky off his feet.

Nat wasn't trying to outrun the Iron Man suit, and he realized she was giving him precious cover. He rolled through the heat shimmer and snatched hold of the towline hook, clinging for dear life.

He saw the Iron Man suit from below, charged up by a blue pulse from the arc reactor. He cried out, shouting, "Tony!"

A split second pause was all he needed, and all he got. Clint shot the EMP arrow dead center. The blunt head only struck Iron Man in the stomach, and cracked to pieces when crushed in that metal gauntlet. The tip detonated.

The wave again knocked the jet back, sending it spinning as the systems flickered and faltered. Nat manually increased thrust and the Quinjet rapidly ascended, leaving the unspooled wire plummeting. Bucky swung off it and went running over the helipad, sure the redheaded Widow cursed his name.

The Iron Man suit crashed to the ground, Tony in it. His arc reactor spun and swirled in a maelstrom of energy but the rest of the armour didn't look nearly so good. Patches form and drove in the surface.

Bucky snatched his shield as he ran by and the brittle metal clamps scraped over the surface. Iron Man rolled and grabbed his arm.

The armoured man wasn't prepared for the prosthetic fist smashing into the side of his head. Bucky howled guttural cries as he brought down his fist, smashing the nanite-reinforced armour. One punch after another rained down.

Iron Man tried to push him off and wasn't prepared for that awful strength turned on him. He was reeling, driving his knees up. Bucky grunted in pain, swallowing the agony, fueling the absolute despair.

"Steve." The sound hissed out through the mask, muffled plea. "I gotta bring you in."  

"Steve?" Bucky buried his vibranium and steel fingers deep into the sealed joint where the battered helmet met the breastplate. "I'm not Steve. You know me. You _know_ me!" He inflicted enough damage to wrench the helm free, the scream of metal mingled with his furious bellowing. Iron Man tried to rip at his suit, curled fingers going for Bucky's eyes.

He pulled the helmet free and stared at the dazed, horrified face of Tony Stark. It wasn't a lie, some terrible daydream. He thought he might be sick.

The diode weakly flared. He flung himself sideways and Tony missed, a scrap too far to the right. He rolled to his stomach and the sputtering reserves lit the base of his boots, firing him into the sky.

Bucky clutched the helmet in his hands as he went to his knees. Inert red and gold metal caught the dawning sun. He felt blindly for his shield, pulling it close, and turned over the empty helm like a skull. Like somehow it might part wisdom from a ghostly voice instead of lying there cold and inert.

"Barnes, we've gotta get moving." Clint called from the ramp, the Quinjet swerving around to dangle the hook near him. "We might be able to track Stark, but dollars to doughnuts, he is going to run to Nevada."

"We won't catch him." Bucky still barely remained upright. The top speed of the armour far exceeded the Quinjet. "We don't know how damaged he is."

Clint squinted against the billowing column of air whipping dust around. "Not nearly as bad as we're going to be if he reaches Nevada. The network power there will wipe Friday out or raise an army of evil robots again. You're all we've got. I'll give you a really great pep talk and a slice of pizza, but you gotta get in here to do it."

Bucky scooped up the shield and the helmet, making a run for the ramp. He barely felt himself moving. Him versus Tony. It was bad enough trying to fight his lover on the battlefield.

He was sure he couldn't do it again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for staying with me so far. The next run through Nevada features the set-piece battle, steamy interludes, and that elusive happy ending.
> 
> All feedback is appreciated.


	15. Reno

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam weakly smacked him on the arm. "Good, you're still one of us. You said yes with any enthusiasm and we'd find out how shooting with a broken arm goes. This close, I figure my odds might be decent."
> 
> Adam's apple bobbing, Bucky forced himself to swallow and let off an angry retort. He could hardly blame Sam for his doubt and uncertainty. A week ago, the world thought him dead. A week ago, Tony laboured in the belief his love perished in the icy wastes of far eastern Asia. He almost wished -- almost -- he hadn't come back.
> 
> "I'm going to regret this night for the rest of my days, Wilson. Don't think any other way."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky and Tony _finally_ have their rendezvous and things get hot in the next chapter. 
> 
> Feedback and comments welcome!

When it rained, it poured. That much Bucky believed, when few other maxims and idioms held any value in the world when anyone lived as long as he did. Natasha's bound arm stopped bleeding, but remained good as useless for anything strenuous. Her attitude cheered him out of his black mood only a little. "Still deadly with my left hand."

A truth in that, too. The Red Room trained all its operatives to shoot under the worst conditions. Any marksman described a Widow's usual firing conditions as terrible. Wearing nothing but a negligee in close quarters tended to do that. He should know; he trained Nat along with most of her cohort.

The burn on Clint's leg needed medical attention above and beyond the gel patch and layers of bandages they wrapped around his calf. No one removed the charred clothing practically melted onto the wound. A thimbleful of nanites programmed for medical care would have erased any trace of the damage. Bucky's own shoulder, smooth as a newborn's skin, spoke to that happy outcome. He had the thimbleful in spades, and they were absolutely useless, inert and dead from the EMP arrow. They were out of EMP arrows short of a trip back to New York.

Steve concretely told them no trip back to New York barring outright necessity before the comms link failed and Friday started throwing errors every way til Sunday. He said he held down the fort plenty of times on his own in the past, and did so just fine while they completed their critical mission. That, too, was true. Bucky swallowed his pride unhappily. Not like Steve couldn't call upon at least a dozen friends with that ancient flip phone of his, or the one functioning payphone left in New York state half a block down the road. Always conscientious, the old captain wished the team of the new well.

Their last communiqué ended on that grim note, the core of the AI under direct assault by a potent wave of attacks a magnitude stronger and more direct than they'd seen before. Nat looked pale and drawn when the line cut out. She gave up trying to restore a connection and turned to dealing with Tony's broken helmet like she unearthed the Rosetta Stone and only needed to translate foreign tongues to understand its secrets. Bucky silently wished her well on that.

His last hope extinguished in a pinch of flame. The live feed from Redwing abruptly cut out in a flicker of fire and a white smoke contrail. Their screen turned a calm blue, announcing "signal lost" in a rotten cherry atop a steaming pile of shit. Just once, Bucky wished something might go their way. Fortune seemed to love using him as her whipping boy.

"Get me visuals," he said.

"Negative." Clint flicked an array of switches that would impress a Radio Shack employee, and gritted through his teeth as the Quinjet shook. Ever since they entered the mountains, the erratic turbulence threw them all around. Bucky wished he could calm that away, but the only person he thought might manage that was probably several realms away.

He smacked his hand on the polished glass. Fortunately, the flesh hand. Anything else would have pulverized the screen. "We've got Sam down there, Barton, negative isn't good enough. Give me whatever we got."

"Short of him finding a ham radio or robbing a hiker of their cellphone, we're up shit creek and he forgot to bring a canoe," the archer said.

Sam Wilson lay somewhere in miles of forest below them, separated from the rough foothills and broken stone desert that marked the transition between elevation and desert. A thin river meandered in the shallow valley below the hills. Literally the only advantage of his crash site was its remoteness from Reno or Lake Tahoe, the traffic bound up to the resort for an autumn break thick at this time of year. Bucky still felt the indifferent touch of luck.

"The last coordinates were six miles due north of the data park." Natasha gestured to the rather gentle peak rising ahead of them. The black line of the interstate carved into its lowest flank mirrored the river, and the low white factories clustered around the largest data center in the US. "Wilson hadn't made it quite as far as Pond Peak."

Clint sniffed. "He couldn't have landed on the highway to make it easy for me, could he?"

Their casual banter disguised real pain. The longer they stayed in the air, the more damage they took. Either from Tony or the injuries Tony inflicted, the source didn't much matter. Bucky pulled down his mask and headed back to grab a parachute. "Enough of that. Can you keep the Quinjet stable enough for me to jump?"

"You can't be serious." The archer's groan chased him all the way to the back of the jet. "You're the only one with a leg to stand on and you're jumping? Would you like a reminder that the nice, secure jet has nice, big anti-aircraft guns that might do something against Iron Man?"

"You're talking about chewing up Tony with an anti-aircraft gun. I'll assume the pain is scrambling your brain and let that slide," Bucky hissed through his teeth. He slid into the parachute and secured the straps down. "Nat, make sure he sticks to the plan. I get down and recover Wilson, you keep on recon for Stark."

She nodded without looking up, still engrossed in her tablet and the helmet. "We'll do the usual drive-by pickup."

"Failing that, get Sam and I'll find the second rendezvous point." With that, he opened the ramp and gasped at the cold wind slapping him in the face. The momentary pause kicked Bucky in the gut, instinct screaming to take shelter as far away from the fast-moving landscape as possible, not jump.

He took a running leap out into thin air.

The sensation never got old.

* * *

As luck would have it, Bucky landed straight atop an eroded plateau and tripped over a thicket of spiny scrub. His parachute became hopelessly entangled and he ripped out the cords rather than waste time cutting himself free. Someone could fine him for littering later. Several startled hikers watched him trot down the hillside and progress to the next peak at a pace they could only wish for.

His phone proved next to useless for getting his bearings, but the old-fashioned compass in his bag proved far better. He made short work of heading in the right direction, glad for all those years spent shivering in Siberia as a precursor to storming the Nevadan desert. Long before he found Sam huddled up against a copse of mountain willows, he discovered proof of the damage. Chunks of seared metal lay scattered in a line running four hundred meters straight up the craggy, corrugated hillside.

Slipping along a dry creek bed, Bucky stopped to pick up the largest fragment yet, a chunk of red metal wide as his palm. He tramped down the tumbled boulders, going out of his way to be as loud as possible.

It still didn't stop the click of a hammer cocking back, a sound doubled over. Bucky slowly raised his gloved hands over his head. "We're cool, Wilson."

"Yeah? How about _zhelaniye_?"

"That was a tired joke when you tried it the one time in New York, and it hasn't gotten better in twenty-four hours," Bucky said.

He spotted Sam tucked between the trees, pulled up to lean heavily against one. As a defensive position went, the copse provided more than adequate shelter and cover. It made a piss poor substitute for crutches, a trip to the emergency room, and functional legs. The machine pistol pointed at him ended up back in Sam's holster, the other gripped when the man couldn't afford to give up his supporting arm.

"Sorry about Redhawk. That seems to be the theme of today," Sam said.

"What, shit happens?"

"You know how weird it is to hear Captain America swearing?"

"Get used to it. You're getting out of here. I'm sorry about the drone." Bucky clambered up the slope and ducked under a few thin branches, consolidating their position by hooking his arm around the dazed, flagging man. Sam grunted while guided over to a flat rock. "Give it to me straight. How bad is it?"

The mirthless smile twisting Sam's face failed to brighten his expression much. Bucky figured he must be running on empty or close enough. Pulling himself into a protected spot may have used the last of his resources the pilot had left.

"Probably a broken leg and two ribs. My wrist is on fire, but my fingers seem to work, and definitely a concussion. My wings clipped. I'm an anchor to you." Sam shivered under his thin suit. The wreckage of his backpack wrapped around him, more seared wires and shorn metal stumps than anything recognizable.

"Isn't that an albatross around my neck?" Bucky got a bark of laughter for that comment. "Nat and Clint are coming in for an exfil. I'll get you down to the evacuation zone."

"I notice that conspicuously missed you in there. No 'we' business. When you going to learn we're a team and like sticking out our necks collectively? Some Avenger you are, being all damn noble and self-sacrificing." Narrowing his eyes, Sam wiped the sweat off his brow. His naturally warm, dusky complexion covered up much, but not the ashen pallor left by pain. He couldn't disguise that from Bucky either. "You clearly aren't the addled monster we had you pegged for."

Bucky fiddled with a few branches, pushing them out of the way. No piece of wood in the vicinity would serve very well as a crutch. He didn't much look forward to a fireman's carry over five miles. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

Sagging back against the tree trunk, the pilot flashed him a thumbs up. "Anytime, Cap. Since you're going to recklessly bash in there, no point keeping anything back. It's bad. Huge facility with few entrances. The data center covers something like a thousand acres or more. Mercenaries all around the loading docks and main doors, and inside. Might as well be its own city. They're armed and looking out for trouble."

"They were tipped off."

"Yeah, Stark showed up. He shot me out of the sky. I guess he doesn't appreciate anyone else flying." Sam went silent. A pointed stare fixed Bucky in place. "You up for going against him."

Was he? The seesaw of doubt kept tipping heavily towards no. He shook his head, dipping his head.

Sam weakly smacked him on the arm. "Good, you're still one of us. You said yes with any enthusiasm and we'd find out how shooting with a broken arm goes. This close, I figure my odds might be decent."

Adam's apple bobbing, Bucky forced himself to swallow and let off an angry retort. He could hardly blame Sam for his doubt and uncertainty. A week ago, the world thought him dead. A week ago, Tony laboured in the belief his love perished in the icy wastes of far eastern Asia. He almost wished -- almost -- he hadn't come back.

"I'm going to regret this night for the rest of my days, Wilson. Don't think any other way." His murmur barely rose loud enough for human hearing.

"Let's get moving. I'm not getting any younger or less bloody sticking around here."

Helping the pilot to his feet, Bucky tested Sam's weight. "It's a long walk. I can throw you in a fireman's carry and get you out faster than us hobbling down a path. Don't worry, I'll never tell except our office parties."

"When the hell have we had an office party?" Sam asked.

The supersoldier shrugged. "Soon as we get back."

That sealed Bucky toting Sam back down the hillside to the Quinjet, looking for the top of a dusty hill half a kilometer due west. He slipped on the path a few times, but managed the weight and occasional grunt of pain from his pasty, sweating companion. By the time they reached the crest of the hill, they were both tired and dirty. The gangplank dropped and no one came out to visit.

"Damn, that's cold. I thought I deserved a better homecoming, running freaking surveillance orbits for you people for twelve hours while you bombed around the tropical destinations." Sam wrenched his eyes shut, mouth in a deep, graven grimace worthy of a Roman mask or a gargoyle. Bucky couldn't decide which. The pilot must have sensed time running out. "Buck. Listen, you better know Tony's not in his right mind."

"I thought the busted flight suit made that clear."

"No." Struggling for words or air, both unlike him, Sam hesitated. He tried again. "I mean, I came up on him in person. He was dragging tools out of a supply truck from the data center and looked happy to see me. Definitely surprised, but happy. Maybe I got a few words in edgewise and then something set him off, maybe the wings. Next thing I know, he suited up and chased me into the sky. I called out to him several times, and it was like shouting at a statue. He still wanted to bring me down. And he did."

Carrying his wounded teammate to the safety of the jet's interior was maybe the hardest thing Bucky could do. "I'm sorry. I'll take care of it." The words weighed his tongue down. He hated the ponderous sound of them.

Five minutes later, the Quinjet raced through a hail of gunfire through the parking lot of the Tahoe Reno 1 data center.

* * *

He'd had many crazy ideas in his life. Crawling atop trains and rappelling down sheer cliff faces in a driving winter storm counted among the worst.

Riding a motorcycle at full speed through a volley of shots screaming around him, shrapnel and asphalt kicked up in front of the handlebars, right at the loading bay door to Tahoe Reno 1 may have taken first or second place on that list. A man needed to stretch his tactical creativity now and then.

The front tire bumped over a screaming mercenary, and the back tire crushed his spine into the pavement. Bucky rose off the seat, absorbing the bump, and gunned the engine. Horsepower launched him forward on his steel steed, but in place of a lance, he had a shield. A vibranium shield at that.

Steve once bashed through a brick wall, so what would be different about an aluminum rolling door about ten feet tall? They could compare notes over another of those tasty beers. He oriented himself on the ramp running up the side of the bay. Other mercenaries clued into his path and dashed for the concrete loading dock, but it was too late for them to catch up or stop him. Even shooting the tires out from under him wouldn't do much. Momentum chased him like a devil wind.

"Stop him!" someone shrieked and he managed to find another gear as the motorcycle approached near top speed.

Truly this was an idiotic idea. The worst he'd had beyond eating at the dodgy diner in the Meat Packing District, where he entertained acute food poisoning for fifteen miserable minutes while Tony worshipped the porcelain toilet gods for an entire two days. What he'd give for that night all over, even willing to switch places with Stark.

Instead, he got the door twisting and screaming on its rails to the dense, heavy super soldier bashing in and through. The motorcycle crumpled up to the shield before the rolling door burst open like a tin can of sardines, cranked open by force.

_One, two, three, four, five…_

Bucky hurled himself forward, gripping the straps of the blessed shield in both hands. He turtled behind the protective hemisphere the best he could, rolling and groaning at the bone-jarring impact. Pain soared up his spinal column and bloomed in a mushroom cloud right under his nape.

Good. Pain meant he was alive and kicking, ripping his way through two guards forced to scatter by the spinning Victory sacrificed to the mission. He didn't think anything of pulling his punches, smashing his fist into ribs and ripping weapons from their hands. Not even impressive guns, these he snapped around to pistol-whip their surprised faces or smack on the back of their heads to bring them down.

He spat seeing the obvious red octopus pinned to a fallen guard's collar. He snatched it up and hurled the profane emblem as hard as he could at the wall. HYDRA.

The cavalry wasn't coming. Him versus his old enemies, and they had Tony in their serpentine clutches. It no longer mattered to him that the data center covered a thousand acres and a small town worth of fighters might defend the place. He vowed to burn it to the ground, damn the consequences, if it meant recovering the one man somewhere on the other side.

Before he could execute on his plan, he needed a phone and a lighter.

* * *

It turned out data center architects had as little creativity or imagination for design as big box stores. Not that Bucky spent much time in those sprawling warehouses buying bulk products, but he appreciated the cavernous size of the place. Once he selected a direction, following the serpentine highways of red cable overhead led him deeper through data room after another. He felt he needed a stick of chalk or a ball of twine to find his way out.

One bank of servers after another spread out before him in the low-lit conditions, moody indigo flashing from certain dark corridors. Steel pipes plunged into the floor to circulate cool air. The constant rattle of fans shook the vented crimson cages enclosing equipment for the massive data center. No surprise to Bucky they were red. If Stark Industries invested anything into the place, red might as well be Tony's calling card.

One more fallen guard collapsed against him, head twisted at an unnatural angle. Bucky dropped him quietly to the floor, tucked away behind one of those nine-foot-tall cages for the cleaning crew to find in another decade or so. He considered the exposed catwalks and climbed up for a better view.

He had no explanation for the presence of a squat, two-story scarlet cube in the middle of the expansive floor. The steel door faced away, but the unmistakable lines of a cabin stuck out among the servers and outsized switches. He couldn't conceive of any reason why a futuristic cabin belonged in a sea of computers, much less in a place crawling with HYDRA mercenaries.

Trekking on foot out of cover across a five meter space of poured concrete and bright lights was the only obvious course. Bucky swung down from the catwalk and stalked into movement, wrapping a meter of stolen cable around his wrist. The vinyl insulation provided a decent ligature if he needed to put someone down temporarily.

Bucky certainly wasn't prepared to hear a familiar voice cursing inside. Ducking against the outside wall, he stared out at a football field of freestanding racks and cases, acutely aware of his own vulnerability. Bad choices in life stacked up in front of his eyes. Standing in plain sight in a facility filled by HYDRA, potentially where cameras monitored his every move, swiftly escalated up the list.

"Piece of useless crap. Never should have been invented." The grumbling voice of Tony Stark penetrated the door, though Bucky strained to hear him. Enhanced hearing or not, a foot of reinforced glass distorted noises to near incomprehensibility. He recognized the sound of something hurled at the floor or shattered with gusto.

He still needed to place a call. The weird little cabin assembled in the place provided that. He reassessed its purpose -- a guardhouse or an office, repurposed to Tony's incomprehensible purposes.

Two clicks squeezed onto his commlink went without response. He long lost any hope they still functioned. His cell phone might give his position away too soon, and he could hardly expect for a signal to break through scattering devices mounted throughout the building. His plan had no reason of working.

He elbowed the door open and squeezed in, flattening against the wall. His first impression of a cabin wasn't entirely off; the place had a spartan quality, certainly, bare linoleum floors and grey walls devoid of much charm. A blueprint pinned to one showed fire exits and the escape route in a solid red line. Beyond a plain desk piled with monitors, a door marked as storage stood plain and forlorn. The other room held debris piled up in all directions, wires dragged down from the ceiling and an impressive array of tools spread over two tables and several chairs shoved together.

Tony had his back to the door, and sparks flew from whatever he soldered into place using an acetylene torch. Scrapped motherboards and broken circuitry piled up in a small mountain by his foot.

"Aw damn," he said, bending slightly and blowing over the glowing metal pooled in a box. "You need to do this now? You're interrupting my satanic ritual. Do you know how fast chicken blood congeals?"

Bucky stared at Tony's back. "Are you out of your goddamned mind?"

"It's in a pot on the stove. I just need someone to keep stirring it. Keeping it heated evenly is so important." The playboy swiveled around, holding the white-hot tip of the torch out in front of him.

Though two meters separated them, Bucky involuntarily stepped back. Reflexes like that kept him alive in the past.

Tony dropped the torch. "This isn't happening."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	16. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Months on after the failed mission, Bucky and Tony finally reunite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story earns its mature/explicit rating for this chapter and the next due to graphic sexual scenes. Feedback and comments welcome!

Nothing ever happened like in stories. There were no thousand yard stares or pensive looks exchanged across the room. Hesitation held them frozen for several long moments, that much proved true. Not to deal with buried feelings and repressed desire blooming in a surge of uplifting hope, though.

Bucky paused to look for an opportunity, a chink in Tony's literal armour as much as the figurative kind.

Stark was apparently paralyzed by throwing something at his head or stamping on the fire burning on the towel laid down to capture scraps of metal and bits of wire. In the end, his instinct went for smothering the flames, kicking over the rug and treading hard atop the blackened, stinking towel.

Seeing his chance, Bucky rushed at the dark-haired man. He swept his forearm up to connect lengthwise across Tony's chest and drove his open palm into the inventor's hip. Forcing him to fold saved Tony's life when they smashed through the wall into a tiled bathroom.

A mirror crashed down, deflecting off Bucky's metallic shoulder. They both crashed to the ground, Tony sent sprawling. He got his arms up to protect his head, though the wind still knocked out of him kept him from rising fast. The arc reactor pulsed in a baleful glow in his chest, burning so bright the black cotton shrouding its outline appeared almost translucent.

Bucky recovered faster, snatching a pistol from his hip and pointing the barrel flat at Tony's face. "Give me one good reason not to pull the trigger."

The gasping in futility and bluish hue to that beloved mouth required all the discipline he could muster. Bucky set his teeth and held the gun steady, prepared to shift his balance and ram the shield into the face of whatever backup plowed through the man-sized hole ripped into the plaster. Broken glass littered the floor, reflecting glimpses of a ruined life. His finger curled.

"Bu--"

Speaking cost Tony but he blurted out wheezy noises. "'Live?" His eyes practically bugged out of his skull, huge and dark, rimmed in white.

"No thanks to you," Bucky said.

He couldn't possibly expect Tony's hands to drop limp at his sides, and his body flop back on the floor. At first he wondered whether Stark attempted some kind of trap or suffered a heart attack. The gun didn't waver as he took a step forward, peering down at the prostrate man.

"I'm sorry." Tony still couldn't speak loudly or clearly, unable to catch his breath. Trauma stole the flame out of his spirit, leaving only the fading traces. "I'm sorry. Oh God. I tried. You know I tried."

"You tried to kill me."

Those blurry eyes tried to focus on the parallel rows of white and scarlet forming a wedge on his stomach, the navy suit. They lingered on the star emblazoned on his breast and Bucky felt the palpable impact of that attention. Tony gagged and rolled slowly to his side, curling up into the fetal position, uncaring of the bullet chambered and waiting to be unleashed on a vital part of his anatomy.

Or that's what he wanted Bucky to think.

"No. No, never that." The thoughts broke from their dam and poured out in a way they hadn't for Tony in months, years. Not since they pulled him numb and grief-stricken from the Quinjet, putting him back in an empty room that no longer glimmered with the energy of life. Of family. "You have to understand. We looked. I looked everywhere. SHIELD, private investigators, defectors. I paid everyone who might get close. Get intel. Bring me anything. I looked."

Looked for him? The pieces slotted home. _Jesus. He thinks I'm talking about Russia?_

Bucky didn't speak, and Tony hastened to fill the void. "Ask -- ask anyone. We looked. Buck, I never gave up on our promise. I didn't. My…" His hand flopped to the ground again, rising a few inches and dropping before Bucky's taut nerves snapped. Ink stained his fingertips, or soot, or some unknown element invented for the purposes of making repairs. For all Bucky knew, it was the truth. "I'm wearing the tags. The tags you left me."

"I left you?"

Tony nodded, barely a dip of his chin. Tears rolled over his face. He clenched his knees tighter, higher. "The Turkish kid. He found me. You remember?"

The worst part, he was. Through a dark smoky lens, the cracked recollections barely stood out. "Yeah," Bucky said. "I told him to bring you back."

"He did. Expensive journey, and hell of a lot more here. But it's nothing. You're here. You followed me. How did you know?" The stuttering flow of words faltered and Tony openly wept.

The stories never said how to handle that. The maid threw herself in the duke's arms and they had steamy sex on the bed after much bodice ripping. Stoic soldiers gave their dames smart nods and ended up at the mayor's office to wed sensibly. They said nothing about ravaged assassins and disgustingly wealthy inventor CEOs or how to mend bridges after murderous attempts.

Bucky went to his knees and listened to Tony pour his broken heart out onto the floor in wracking, heavy sobs. Time ticked past, far too long, and his guard remained frozen in place. As ruses went, Tony's ploy was masterful. He was a superb actor or genuinely stricken. The super soldier knew all too well that memories were fluid, and no telling what might have been done to his love.

He left Tony weeping on the floor and found that unicorn of technology, a proper landline. Phoning Natasha was a hell of a risk. He punched in the numbers and waited, giving a brief passcode in Russian.

Only her breathing gave her away.

"Fifteen." He paused for five seconds, and said, "Three shots. East."

Nat, to her credit, understood his warning that he had Tony in the middle of hostile territory. "Roof?"

As tempting as ripping open the roof of the data center to heroically snatch the cable was, he doubted the Quinjet could withstand the firepower massed around them. Certainly not with three wounded teammates aboard. He reluctantly answered, "Niner." No. "Independently, maybe."

"How the hell do you think to get him out of there on your own? He's compromised."

"So am I." His gaze flicked back to Tony, still curled on his side and crying. "Grab eggs." With that command, Bucky ordered the Quinjet out of the area, cutting off his own evacuation.

Natasha swore viciously at him through the phone. "Home is still dark. You're on the ground. We need to shut that business down."

Shit. He hadn't thought about Friday and the cyberattacks originating from the data center, focused so entirely on Stark. Bucky pulled his thoughts together enough to respond. "How?"

"Neutralize the operators. Failing that, open a path to me so I can plug into the mainframe." Her plan sounded so reasonable. Nothing but a few dozen well-armed men standing between Bucky and one of a couple thousand mainframe terminals in the vast complex.

"That's what I like about you, you ask for reasonable things," Bucky said.

She blew out a pained noise. Tony focused bleary eyes on him. Too risky to let the call last any longer.

His thumb stroked the hammer on the gun as he cradled the phone against his ear. "How long do you need?"

"Ideally? An hour. Then meetup."

"Where?"

"Don't worry, you'll know. Stay out of the open," Nat said and hung up on him. He dropped the phone back on the base, staring at Tony. No doubt he picked out the details, and knew something of what Bucky planned.

The hardest part of being leader lay in the ugly decisions required by the role. He needed to deal with Tony, and fast. Rendering him unconscious removed one risk, but he expected his lover to fight tooth and nail. Getting a surprise hit in before Tony suited up relied on ugly odds.

"Barnes?" The tentative question hovered in the air and bashed through his resolve to do anything cruel of the sort. Tony slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position, spooked as a rabbit in front of a fox. Raising his hands in surrender, he froze. Tears shone on his blotchy red cheeks. His bloodshot eyes gleamed and he looked absolutely wrecked. He was perfect.

"I'm not your enemy. I don't want to hurt you." Tony took in a faulty breath. "I won't hurt you."

Exactly the sort of thing he expected Stark or anyone brainwashed by HYDRA to say to get his guard down. Hell, Tony probably believed every sentiment until he triggered. The smart thing would be to run, to take shelter somewhere else and wait for Nat's signal. He might wreak enough havoc on the data center or the network to halt the cyberattack on Friday. A place like this had enough juice to cause problems for the AI core, despite all her security protocols, and Steve wouldn't do much for any kind of attack on the core except a physical one. All sensible options.

Where Tony Stark was involved, he was anything but sensible.

A sensible man did not holster his gun and approach on his knees. He didn't twist the handle of the shower and help guide the weeping man who could be his undoing into the water. Certainly, he would never tolerate Tony's shaking hands framing his face, running down the damp uniform, pushing the helmet back from his face.

A sensible man never tolerated kisses from an enemy, pressed hesitant and uncertain to his lips and his cheeks, as though Tony couldn't decide where to place his affections first. Soft butterfly brushes of the thin mouth branded every inch of Bucky's jawline, the underside of his chin brushed by dark hair. His hands remained to his side, right up until Tony peeled away the uniform collar and gasped.

"Your scars." Wonder filled Stark's wet eyes, and he turned his face up to the taller man.

How could he explain that? Bucky shook his head. "Unexpected benefit of your work." No more, no less, as he pushed Tony back into the needling spray of hot water. The damp t-shirt needed to go, if only to assuage the nagging voice in the back of his mind about hidden weapons and threats. "What were you doing out there?"

His lover seemed startled by the question. "Trying to fix my armour."

"Why?" So much hinged on a simple question. Bucky stilled, braced for the reckoning.

"It ended up damaged in a battle. It happened so quickly, I barely made it here. I've kept a few backups of my work here. The rest is all manual labour, though." Tony looked puzzled, a frown settling over his damp face. He pressed his cheek to the broad expanse of Bucky's chest, lacing his hands around Bucky's neck to convince himself of the reality of the moment. "That doesn't matter right now. I can get back to it later. Or never. As long as I have you."

All the ways their reunion could go, Bucky never imagined Tony simply falling into his arms after trying to murder him.

Bucky gritted his teeth at the simple admission of loss and love. He was unable to disguise his wavering heartbeat, the prickle of unease settled permanently along his spine. His heart wanted what it wanted.

"You'll always have me," he said softly.

A soft moan slipped from Tony.

Stripping off his wet t-shirt took some work. Bucky resisted the urge to yank the clothes apart, obliterating threads and making a ruined mess. Tony cooperated with easing the damp hem over his head. Clearing the black cotton, his bare chest covered in bruises and a few cuts were the starring attraction. Until they weren't.

The tags dangled in plain set, a double set. His own pair lay on a chain next to the dogtags he gave Tony.

"Stark…"

Tony folded his fingers around the tags, and his metal hand wrapped around the fragile digits. Everything hurt in a single pulse. "I never stopped hoping that you'd come back. That we might have this, for just one night or a little." The water washed over them, pooling around their feet. Bucky was still mostly dressed, his lover stripped to the waist.

It was only natural their lips met in a crushing, soul-drinking kiss that never seemed to stop. Not sensible, not at all, but essential. They ended up against the wall, their fingers straying under clothing and sculpting bare skin, frenzied and furious to remove the barriers between them. Unable to stifle the ferocious heat between them, Bucky bent his head, lips firm against Tony's yielding mouth. Fine hairs brushed his chin and upper lip. He devoured the wet heat offered up to him, a sacrifice to separation.

Too many barriers separated them. Impatience flashed through him. Distrust shackling Bucky's base impulses ebbed away as they naturally fit against one another. Steam filled the small combination shower and tub, trapping heat under the heavy weight of his uniform. He endured that torrid atmosphere, drawing wet breaths between clashes of their mouths. Their tongues dueled in curls, darting flourishes painted against his palate.

Sliding his hand between them, Bucky moved by touch and memory. Many times he traced the rippled contours of Tony's belly with his fingers, his lips, and his tongue.

Tony whimpered into the kiss when his pants opened and slid down, forced by weight and insistent, dragging tugs to his ankles.

Not sensible, but essential. For without Tony, Bucky wasn't living. He was going through the motions.

The shower drenched the fire engine red briefs and sent rivulets coursing over his taut, pale body. Water pooled in the small of his back while Bucky slid his thumbs under the elastic waistband and pulled in a savage motion. As it snapped, the band and cloth tore away in a red flag of surrender.

Tony arched into him, shielded against the shock of the tug on his leg and the cold around him. Throwing his head back presented a fascinating view of his exposed throat. Water dripped down the powerfully corded sinews. Bucky struck, lowering his head, lapping up one of those beads.

Hell, this was past reckless. For all Bucky knew, Hydra abused every particle of affection in his lover as a means to assure his compliance. To torture him. By now they must know of his defection.

If this was his only chance with Stark, screw the consequences. HYDRA took everything else of value from him -- his best friend, his lover, his free will, even his name and his life.

His fingers trekked through Tony's damp hair while he felt the tight grip of those warm hands move from his neck to his shoulder. Calloused fingertips trembled as they crept down the strong slope. Tony moved furtively, as though he feared Bucky might blow away in the wind.

Not good enough by half. Bucky scraped his hand through the thicket of damp hair tending to stand up in the back. Kissing Tony's head, he swept his palms down the tantalizing arch of his spine, dipped in and flaring out at the tailbone. God, Tony's skin was smooth but for the odd bruise or cut marring the perfection.

Small sounds of discomfort slid from Tony as he anointed his thumb over each hurt. Counting the ridges and bumps took an achingly slow time. Not that it mattered. Natasha said she needed him to lay low for an hour until her counterattack was ready.

An hour. Easy. Bucky tightened his mouth and grasped Tony's muscular thighs. Swiftly he raised the smaller man into the full spray of the shower. Corded muscles played beneath Tony's skin as he struggled to regain balance and found no purchase. His feet tread and swung, then struggled to lock around Bucky's waist.

"You're still dressed," Tony gasped.

"So?" The single word spoke volumes. Bucky diverted himself by nibbling on Stark's throat on a winding journey from shoulder to the point under his ear. He adored how Tony twitched his shoulder involuntarily to defend himself, bulling his face deeper.

 _Give it up to me, Tony_.

His tongue danced in swirls and lines to coax out a reaction. Tony bit his lip, his head tilted back. Water poured down his face and his eyes closed tight, lashes scored in black lines. Rampant pleasure kept him pulled rigid, no give in his quivering belly.

The stirring heat of his cock begged for attention as he slowly grew to hardness. Bucky couldn't spare a hand though he could easily hold Tony up in his metal hand. That would deprive him of feeling in the other, and bringing the motionless, stiff playboy to his release quickly spoiled all the fun. He left Tony to thrust slowly against the dark, sodden weave of his uniform. That, in itself, was a delirious thrill.

"I need you." Tony's breath sent watery plumes buffeting over his head. "Please."

Bucky smiled. His lips caught the full earlobe taunting him, and he started to suck. "Tell me more." Asking Tony Stark to think at all with his ear besieged by questing lips and an agile tongue was fruitless.

He held on tighter, leaving bruises from the firmness of his grip as Tony bucked his hips. Nothing but instinct drove him to rut there, suspended in the air. His shaft pointed thick and hard at Bucky's chest. The crown slid along the furrowed groove of the soldier's abs, leaving an imperceptible trail of slick warmth.

Tony shuddered under his mouth branding hot skin. He was always vocal during lovemaking. The passionate, feverish suckling drove him higher like the alcohol and drugs he forsook in favour of Bucky. Scraping his fingers over the dark hair and bare skin behind the mask pushed back gave him something to cling onto.

"Fuck, I've been dying for this. I thought I'd never touch you again. That we'd never be together like this. It's been hell without you."

Bucky craved the scent of him, catching the last hints of an expensive French cologne that served as a trademark for his lover as his goatee or arrogant smile. "I never left by choice. You know that."

"Doesn't matter. You came back, that's all I care about."

"Forgive me for leaving you, for hurting you," Bucky said, punctuating every second word with another kisses.

Gasping for breath, Tony bit his lower lip. "Make it up to me then. Say you're sorry by touching me."

The kneading massage against his thighs hoisted the smaller man higher, giving more room for Bucky to lick and kiss and suck in short order. "You know better than that. A shower is no place for us to fuck."

The sweet cry of protest drowned behind Tony's clenched teeth. "No."

Tony flexed his hips in short, fast jerks. Metal fingers cupped his buttock and thigh, tugging the cheek apart from the flesh hand mirroring the motion. The exposure sent a wave of goose flesh over him, stiffening his nipples. He wanted more, desperately needed more.

"What is this place, anyway? Is anyone going to interrupt us?" Bucky whispered in his ear.

"Office." The chattering response rolled over Tony's tongue, his voice cracking in a groan. "Converted it to my workshop for now."

"So no bed?"

"Desk."

Stark's wish was his command. He bit deep into Tony's shoulder, thrilling at the hot, panting breaths and sobbing cry of deep pleasure that welled up from deep in the struggling man. Relishing his lover's insistence, Bucky stroked Tony's cock in his fist. The slow, regular pumping did nothing more than inflame those cries to a broken pitch.

He carried Tony out through the bathroom door rather than by the hole in the wall, however tempted he might be by a devilish grin. His boots crunched on broken computer parts as they passed the disassembled motherboards and tools to the office.

A sweep of his arm knocked papers from the desk in a torrential blizzard. Tony landed on the surface and thrust his hips up, unwilling to surrender the rhythmic fisting of his cock. Fluttering breaths punctuated by the occasional groan poured out of him. Bucky watched his expression as he moved his clenched fingers smoothly up and down. They needed lube and lacked it.

That left only one choice and he went to his knees. Tony's knees opened for him, and seeing the rough bruises and cuts surrender to uninjured skin called him home. His hands wrapped around Tony's legs, pushing them wide, granting him room to go for the kill.

Bliss was the salt and steel taste of his lover in his mouth, brushed over his lips. He took Tony at a shallow angle, but Tony had other plans, thrusting his hips as high as those unyielding hands planted on his thighs would allow. Straining to bury himself deeper, he pressed himself forward. Bucky thwarted him merely by leaning back, taunting the efforts by sucking noisily on the flared tip.

"Don't." Tony tried to stifle another groan, a warbling note of distress.

Bucky raised his head, letting the fat shaft slip out of his mouth. "All right." He blew a stream of air through his rounded lips over the flushed, darkening member.

To his gratification, Tony's anguished noises grew louder, filling the office. He held the inventor down against the desk as Tony leaned back and grabbed the edge for leverage. His efforts to pump his hips did little but make his stiff shaft bob around.

They reached the four minute mark before Stark capitulated, craving a hostile takeover.

"Suck me." Tony's eyes rolled back. "Please. Stop teasing me, I'll do anything."

It dawned on Bucky he might demand a shutdown of the facilities, an override, even a ride out the door. All pipe dreams, fantasies for the damned.

He lowered his head and went back to sucking. They had a long way to go before Natasha was finished, and he needed to keep Tony occupied until her signal.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	17. Tahoe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After their passionate reunion, Bucky and Tony have to return to work thanks to Natasha.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback and comments welcome.

Tony laid against the desk in a boneless heap. His arm hung over the side loosely, fingers twitching in weak pulsations. Moans left his lips sporadically. Mustering enough energy to thrash around under Bucky's demanding lips was beyond him. He was wrecked, his legs spread in a limp, wide angle.

Forty-nine minutes of nonstop suckling and hand jobs alternating with bites and kisses left him totally ruined. He gave up on struggling and begging fifteen minutes in. Begging serenaded Bucky's diligent efforts to keep him completely off-balance, but words completely failed after ten fruitless minutes. Threats did nothing more than demands or pleas. He'd sold the moon and his entire company to be allowed to cum.

Bucky said no. Lovingly, firmly.

So he tried to climb away without success. When he started to fight free of Bucky's grasp, Tony learned the hard way about their vastly different strength. The metal prosthetic arm could easily have shattered stout leg bones, but Bucky shifted his grip to pin those quaking thighs apart. He loved the tremors jerking under his fingers while he ran his tongue along Tony's darkened shaft.

A thin dribble of clear slickness constantly ran from the tip. He followed the stream back to its source and laid his tongue flat atop the slit.

The chorus weakly rose again. Stark lacked much of a voice, but sweet bubbling cries rose up again.

"Time to cum," Bucky whispered across that fat, throbbing shaft, cooling the wet trails. "You ready to explode?"

Tony tossed his head. Down to the dregs, he might not even understand the words spoken to him. His hands open and shut on nothing. Bucky moved his fingers to the cleft between his lover's taut buttocks. Fatigued muscles didn't even stir much as he slid the metal digit back and forth around the slightly swollen rim of Tony's hole.

The puffy ring clung to his finger in weak flexes. He spent the better part of their lovemaking teasing out the tension built up in the reluctant muscle. Like prolonged massage sessions loosened up tightly wound joints and muscles, so too his persistence reduced Tony's ability to resist to slag.

It made the wrecked man moan in a higher, strident key. Bucky pulled his mouth away and squeezed the base of Tony's cock firm. Not hard enough to hurt, but the distraction from the toying at his puckered entrance prevented an immediate loss of control then and there. More slickness bubbled out from him.

A proper prostate massage wasn't in the cards, no matter how badly the super soldier longed to offer redemption to his lover. Natasha's instructions were clear. Hell, he still couldn't piece together why their little office outpost in the data centre hadn't been overrun.

Probably something to do with Nat's efforts. She might not be half the wizard with technology that Tony was, but she brought down networks and her penetration testing -- in all senses -- left most professionals and deep web trolls in the dust.

His tongue flicked to capture a thick bead of arousal drooling from Tony. It tasted of salt and the hard tang of cream. The merest touch of his lips to the oversensitive shaft forced a long rolling cry from his lover, one that spiked abruptly when Bucky slid two fingers up to the last knuckle through the softened rosebud.

Poor man. He hadn't enjoyed anything in his ass, only the constant teasing. Forgetting no hands pinned him down, Tony bucked in involuntary, slow motions. His cock stood out hard as a legionnaire's spear, dusky and velvety, while he surrendered to the fingers gyrating a dark, deep waltz.

Bucky needed a moment to locate his target. He thrust his fingers against the soft pressure point and massaged. The one main drawback to the metal was a lack of sensation for him, but that didn't matter. Once he started lightly thrusting, the end came in utter violence, a star spending itself in rippling novas.

The plundering of Tony Stark lasted barely two minutes -- and he howled and finally lost his voice, staggering to his peak the whole time. Bucky refused to touch that rigid cock, wedging himself between Tony's legs to watch the reckless undoing.

The inventor pulled on his own nipples and ran his hands down his chest, stopping at his navel and heading up. Their old rule of look, don't touch unless given permission must have been engrained deeper than any HYDRA programming. Bucky waited until the slit in the tip flexed. It spread, right as Tony thickened up.

He struck fast as a viper. His mouth wrapped around the incredibly tender crown and his tongue slid in quick, hard strokes. Tony arched up, almost choking him with the rush of his cum. So much of it poured out, the soldier was forced to swallow immediately. More ran down his chin.

Tony's breathless, hoarse sounds of effort matched his body trying to launch itself to the ceiling. He would have buried himself down the super soldier's throat but for a total lack of coordination or fine motor control. As it was, he moved around wildly long enough that Bucky held on tight for dear life.

He sucked for all he was worth, relishing the intimacy and finally making his dramatic, high-strung beloved crash down to earth with a shudder.

Not a sound of protest answered when he pulled Tony into his arms, back pressed to his chest. The exhausted man rested limp against him.

"Why'd you come 'ere?" Tony finally got his wits together to ask the question that should have been asked the moment Bucky stepped out of the dark.

"A whole lot of people are counting on me to help them," Bucky said. Tony deserved a better explanation. There would be one, after he demolished the final stage of Truth and Reconciliation's plans.

"I can help. You need something here, this network's a piece of cake."

The soldier paused, a faint smile more parts sadness than joy on his lips. Of course Tony would think of helping before asking, especially with civilians involved. That was how his mind worked. "You can help best by getting out of the building. I've got no problem making my escape from the ground."

Tony quirked a brow at him, tilting drunkenly to see his face. "Why are you trying to get rid of me?"

"I've got intel that hostiles work here." Vague statements might get only so far with Tony. Bucky cursed being forced to think on his back feet. "I came to take care of them, but I need someone to secure the rendezvous point and keep an eye open."

"Hostiles." Tony nodded. "That's a lot of ground to cover. Where is your exfil?"

Listen to him, speaking like a spy. At least one played on TV. Bucky offered a weak smile. "The other side of the data center, a mile down the interstate, by a rest stop."

Maybe it was a weak cover, but Tony still flowed in a post-orgasmic haze. His lover nodded weakly. "I got your back."

That was the crux of the matter. Bucky wasn't sure he did. His dark line of thoughts abruptly ended.

The phone in the pitiful workshop rang. Natasha's signal brought him upright, and he gently lay Tony back on the desk in an uncoordinated sprawl of limbs and bemused attitude.

He lifted the handset and said nothing for six seconds, clicking his tongue against his palate. Their old hints in the trade were simple and plain.

"You're inside?" Nat's voice was a cool balm over him.

"Laying low inside," he said. He defaulted to Russian by reflex, though anyone from HYDRA patched into their connection -- unlikely as it was -- wouldn't be deterred by the choice of language. They would, however, expect it from the Winter Soldier.

She swore. "I have someone great for the cleaning staff. It would help if I had a foot in the door for an introduction."

She wanted to be on the ground. Whatever solution she had probably required computer access to unleash Friday or penetrate the network. Poor options considering the abundance of mercenaries scattered throughout the facility, on the lookout for conspicuous redheads or Avengers.

"Negative. I can make the introductions if you give me a cover letter." Let him access whatever she needed.

"How am I going to get you a cover letter? The entire system is secure, no attachments allowed on messages." Nat had a point. It wasn't like the facility had windows to drop a flash drive through, and Sam's drone lay in ruins somewhere over Pond Mountain.

He cursed quietly in turn. Tony might not understand Russian well but he probably heard the tone. Nat couldn't walk up to a mainframe and plug in code or start overwhelming the system. With her capabilities, the team of hackers would overwhelm her if their code didn't. Let alone the fact Natasha had to stand still and that left her vulnerable. Stealth didn't apply patched into a system. "I can't make you invisible." Too many bodies on the ground stood between her and the network. He was already inside. He could do the work if she guided him.

She sniffed in his ear, as close to displeasure as she willingly got.

"Drop something off with me or let me copy the message. This isn't the place to make a face-to-face. If she's good as you say, she just needs me for the introduction," Bucky said.

"What do you know about subtle insertions?"

"You've got me or the Italian job unless command told you to cut your losses and run."

Ruffled papers interrupted the silence on the other end of the line. Natasha pointedly stressed her words with a flat tone. "Are you?"

The temptation to pull Tony out of there, issuing an order to blast them through the roof and fly for the horizon, grew all the stronger as he glanced around the corner at the disorganized office left a mess by their passionate interlude. Heat bloomed in his cheeks. "Complete the mission. You'll be my eyes, just like old times."

"And the Italian job?"

Bucky lost his smile, his cheeks still burning a healthy red. "He'll be outbound any time now." Neutralizing Tony by sending him far from the data center was still his safest course of action. "Keep an eye out and pick him up."

"Good. Package inbound in the hole. Fifteen seconds." The line went dead.

He dashed back into the office and wrapped his arm around Tony. The man was on his feet, trying to restore himself to some kind of respectability by zipping his fly and buttoning his pants. A pity, his efforts soon took a dangerous turn as Bucky ran him through the door and back into the bathroom.

"Buck?" Tony stared at him, wild-eyed, face flushed. "You're that ready to go?"

"Special delivery." Yanking a towel from the open cubby, Bucky threw it over Tony's head and bodily drove both of them to the floor of the tub. Muffled protests rumbled out of his lover, drowned out at the first explosive salvo against the roof. Shrapnel skittered across the flat expanse, driven by hot shockwaves.

Given the vastness of the complex, he figured Clint or Natasha had only a general idea of his whereabouts. The chances of a direct hit from the Quinjet's guns were fairly low. He hadn't counted on ordnance.

Tony pulled the towel off his head and twisted around under Bucky. "What the hell's going on out there? Are those your hostiles? We can't stay here."

"Can you get out of here as Iron Man? If so, now is your time to go.l"

"Yes, of course." Tony gritted his teeth. "There's no reason I can't take you." Squealing metal and the threnody of sirens blaring outside the building drowned out remainder of his words. Power flickered. The lights in the bathroom and the office flashed out, then came up when the generators for a place as large as the data center kicked on.

Unapologetically cold, Bucky slid off the smaller man. He tested the stability of the tub walls with his hand, and then reached up to pull his helm over his head. The blue leather settled back in place like an old glove. "Go. That's an order, Stark."

He oriented on the only exit, the front door back out to the data center. Leaving his idyll meant returning to the real world, stepping over the threshold into slow-motion destruction racing down a slope towards sure doom. The very place where Bucky felt most at home was in the heart of the raging whirlwind, clarity sinking in during a firefight. He found serenity even in the flickering shadows and flashing lights over some kind of alarm system on the far wall.

The dash through no man's land brought a hint of movement near a catwalk, and then the ceiling ripped apart with a row of bullets that tore to the far wall. Bucky lowered his head and sprinted after the bullets slamming into the concrete floors and metal cages enclosing the switches and servers. He zigzagged around the freestanding cases to throw off the mercenary shadowing him at a distance.

Shooting ended as the Quinjet peeled off, but Bucky at least had a direction. He almost reached the fireproof door into the next chamber when the mercenary shot at his head. Wide, but the bullets riddling the wall made him instinctively duck down.

"Hey, Calamity Jane, you mind not ventilating my workspace?" Tony's shout rolled over the concrete shell of the expansive room.

Bucky couldn't see where the mercenary went but he assumed his shadow found a new target. Metal grates screened a clear shot and, at any rate, he abandoned the firearms stolen from the guards back in the office. No point carrying them when he needed to move, and the mission beckoned ahead. Tony Stark called him from behind. But Tony wasn't helpless. As he slid through the door, he heard the next burst of fire end midway through a salvo. Something heavy crashed into a server rack.

Red armour flowed over the inventor like wine, lapping along his veins in a shining veneer. The nanites fit into the chiseled armour impossibly bright and clean. As the glittering matrix locked into a facial plate, the glowing eye slits lifted. And Iron Man raised his hand at the door, the repulsor shaped in pure white light.

_Shit. No!_

His love for Tony might be strong, but survival instinct overruled his tender feelings. He threw himself to the side, rolling hard off the poured concrete floor. A beam incinerated the doorway. He rose at a dead run through the servers and thick pipes. One solid hit from Iron Man's repulsors would not put him out of the fight. Multiple shots would.

Holes in the ceiling let warm autumn sunlight through. How convenient of Natasha to leave him a trail of breadcrumbs. Bucky adjusted course to follow the jagged line with Iron Man in pursuit. He held no illusions about his ability to hide from any of the suit's inner scanners, and keeping a lead relied on interference.

The path jogged diagonally across another cavernous warehouse chamber. Collapsed racks and a rather large patch of open sky caught his eye. Two targets moving around in a daze through the dust-laden air gave him minimal pause as he swung past shipping crates and server stacks.

He plowed his way past a mercenary unprepared for a uniformed man to come bursting around a ten foot high row of metal shelving. Bucky grabbed him by the shoulder and hurled him into the rack. Shelves collapsed as the man's limp body plowed through them. The mercenary didn't get back up and the debris spilled over on him.

The noise attracted Iron Man and the other mercenary. They converged on the source while Bucky slowed, slipping between the stacks. Weaving a path to the rubble gave him time to measure the disorderly heap underneath the collapsed roof. Blocking out the shouted challenge from the gun-toting man and the responding quip from his armoured teammate came easy.

And there he saw it, a thin arrow planted between peeled curls of aluminum and plaster. Bucky checked his position. A twenty foot jump to the heap, a roll down the back side to cover. And the risk of Iron Man shooting him. He wasn't much concerned about the gunman.

Bucky put the shield on his arm and hunkered lower. Three quick steps launched him into a jump that outclassed any Olympic record.

The gunman still trained his attention and AR-15 on Iron Man, ten meters away. As the super soldier dropped out of the blue onto the mountain of debris, he crouched and snatched the arrow.

A smoking burst of shrapnel and debris exploded in front to Bucky. He lost his footing as the beam vaporized rock and tucked into a roll. That blast was set to kill.

Arrow clutched in his fist, Bucky rose with the shield positioned to intercept another shot.

That blast went wide. Repulsors hissed as Iron Man floated to the ruined ceiling.

"I already gave you the go peacefully speech. I don't feel like repeating myself." The metal helmet distorted Iron Man's voice a degree. Modulated and cold, like a machine and not a man.

Bucky knew he played a dangerous game. He crept back a step at a time, the shield raised.

Shadows shifted across the ground. Sunlight back lit the armour's lurid silhouette as Iron Man zipped across the gaping hole to the sky. He wasn't about to zip into the heavens for his freedom. The plan for his immediate evacuation went down in flames along with standing together.

Iron Man stood only for himself, Bucky thought bitterly. Not the first time an ally turned on him. This instance actually hurt, a deep betrayal. He had a mission to complete, lives to save. His heart didn't settle into the equation.

"You're done, Cap," Iron Man said. "It's time someone put a stop to you. Sorry it had to be me."

The nanites reassembled the metal gauntlet into an arm cannon, rising up in split segments like blocky leaves around the stem of a flower. The few seconds to settle in gave Bucky time to charge for the door rather than fight.

Tension bubbled over. Iron Man swore. He probably hadn't expected Bucky to run. He followed, narrowing the lead, and abruptly spun.

Twin lines shot from the roof. He swatted aside one and pointed the cannon at the hole, obliterating a ragged five meter circle in the ceiling with one blast. A body blown backwards drew him out.

Bucky didn't stop to see the outcome of the diversion. Fuck ideals, screw nobility, and so much for the non-violent approach. Every element of surprise and stealth on his side existed to complete the mission. Iron Man had fallen. HYDRA held the upper hand. His allies held on by a thread.

Everything came down to him. He snapped off the container on the arrow and fit the earpiece snugly in place. Finding his way to the mainframe access shouldn't be hard. Walking out alive was a bit far fetched, even for him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	18. Truth and Reconciliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world knows Captain America is a noble, honourable man. Bucky Barnes defending the love of his life, on the other hand, is willing to play dirty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback and comments welcome.

“You gonna arrest me?“ The lanky guy sneered. His scarred lip curled over yellow teeth. His smattering of uneven facial hair in a thin mustache and goatee reinforced his youth. Bucky figured he wasn't much older than a college student, complete with the irritating attitude. That matchstick of a guy typed away. “I ain't breaking any laws. How you gonna deal with that, Captain? You're a little bitch.“

You'd think an AR-15 strapped over his back and the machine pistols at his side would deter mouthing off. Bucky shook his head a little. The arrogance of youth mystified him. That he and Steve ever survived their adolescence, much less ran headfirst into the War, still blew his mind.

He stalked into the server room, crushing discarded pop cans and coffee cups that spilled out of the overturned garbage can. The spent magazine dropped from his gun, and he slid in a fresh one. Heat generated by the dozen servers in a rock washed over his bruised limbs, and he found the tropical heat almost balmy.

Little things counted. Warm air, maybe a bit stuffy. Fresh ammunition. Iron Man not crashing through the door. Bucky hadn't heard hide or hair from him since Iron Man shot through the warehouse roof.

With every step Bucky took, the lanky kid's sneer turned more brittle. “Since when do you use a gun?”

Bucky didn't answer, kicking aside a chair and leveling the AR-15 at Mr. Sneer.

“I'm not going to give up and surrender.” Mr. Sneer jabbed his fingers on the keyboard. The monitors faced away from Bucky and offered a pitiful shield. “You can point your gun and give me a rousing pep talk. Say whatever. I've got work to do.”

The guy’s chair squeaked as he rolled between the two workstations. Sweat beaded on his upper lip and his gaze shifted back and forth, constantly checking on Bucky's position.

Served him right, he should be afraid. The red, white, and blue uniform stood for something, sure. Too many idiots thought the inherent nobility in Steve's long tenure as Captain America meant they could get away with anything. That he might stand by while they hurt countless people.

“Fine, don't.”

Shooting Mr. Sneer in the stomach might complicate matters more than he liked. Punching him in the mouth appealed more for the simple benefit that it would shut the idiot up. He flexed his hand into a fist. Every second wasted on the obstinate hacker put them all at greater risk.

Looming didn't slow Mr. Sneer down either. The desk separated them, not much more. Glaring up, the lanky hacker bared his stained teeth. “Don't you know anything about personal space?”

“You know anything about reconciliation?“

Bucky pulled the pistol and slammed the handle across Mr. Sneer's cheek in a casual swipe. The force knocked the bearded youth out of the chair. He took a gratifying bounce off off the floor and crashed onto his back and raised his hand to the offending welt forming on his split cheek.

“What the fuck? You can't do that!” the youth said.

Snatching the back of the chair, Bucky slid it out of the way. He was gratified to see he hadn't broken Mr. Sneer's skull or given time to lose login credentials. Bucky could easily pin his actions on the writhing kid on the ground.

He stamped on Mr. Sneer's wrist to stop him from reaching for a cord, and ground his heel down.

“You're Cap! You're not supposed to hit people!”

“You're right, I'm not.” Bucky cuffed him again and left the hacker sprawled out.

Settling into the office chair, he reviewed the mess of information spilled over several screens. Pretty sure he shouldn't see account balances and reports of power usage for most of Reno.

The little earpiece activated after two taps by his fingertip. Natasha's voice blossomed in his ear, tight with pain, but clear. She recited basic instructions and he started scrolling through the program list to locate the app and a command prompt.

He found a certain rhythm entering the commands and following Natasha's recorded instructions. Strings of grey text crawled up the monitors. Bypassing security barriers resembled the recon missions in grimy eastern industrial complexes and swanky resort awash in liquor, drugs, and international power players. Success hinged on the lightest touch, performing an action at a critical moment.

Surgeons operated with similar delicacy as he opened a hole in the invisible net wrapped around the network. A ping sounded over the network, a depth charge on the other side of the continent. He imagined the vermillion wave turning and surging for that exploit. Friday wouldn't have much time to react but time hardly mattered on a scale where the AI could perform a thousand transactions in the space of a blink.

Two keystrokes brought forth an inconspicuous blip over the screen, the only signal of a reaction. No countdown timer appeared. The instructions from the earpiece told him to wait a minimum of six minutes and monitor the data traffic for signs of a spike, Bucky's sign that Friday infiltrated the network.

He already lived on borrowed time. Any moment Tony might return. Truth and Reconciliation contained gifted programmers and systems engineers. We're they anything less than exceptional, he wouldn't be sitting in a chair restlessly shaking his foot.

A scrape broke his concentration. He went for his gun but too late. A pair of prods struck his calf, skidding up his boot into the tight material. Mr. Sneer, bloodied and whey-faced, gave him a yellow snarl.

"Suck this."

Shooting a full fifty thousand volts from a stungun into human flesh was singularly an unpleasant experience, super soldier or not. Bucky had no intention of repeating his experience with the generator and Black Widow's electrified bracers. Wishes mattered little when wearing the winged cap of liberty.

His teeth chattered in his skull and his body seized rigid in the seat. Mr. Sneer hauled himself up by the leg of the desk as the world seemed to burn in Bucky's vision. The involuntarily blinks scraped his eyelids over his unfocused eyes, grit that scoured the tender balls. Whining components seized in a helter-skelter dance in his prosthetic arm. Metal plates leapt and tilted or flattened as the surging current raced through them.

The hacker swung. Still thrumming with the electrical charge, Bucky watched the fist bash into the reinforced ceramic plate armour over his stomach and then higher. The timing spoke to a man who never bothered getting into a gym but he still managed to leave bruises, though he took a few in return. Mr. Sneer's face loomed over his, the shriek and spittle flying at the soldier unavoidable.

Let him take out all his anger on Bucky -- as long as Friday's routines went uninterrupted. He imagined even now the observant men and women in HYDRA's monitoring division -- of course they had one of those, given all the data they managed -- took notice of the incursion of an anomaly in a center already under attack by the Avengers. The plucky little AI had an uphill battle ahead of her.

He fell to the ground, still spasming, his muscles gone painfully taut. Kicks flew at him. He hated Converse shoes, ugly things without an ounce of style. The flat soled shoes inflicted more damage to his pride than his ribs, though Mr. Sneer tried to knock his body back.

Counting down through the rain of blows and kicks hurt, to be sure, but a tolerable hurt. His Russian masters did much better on their first day than Mr. Sneer ever would. His shoulder still resonated with those odd tight generating a charge. Sporadic shorts froze his fingers or forced them to move involuntarily. When he could form a fist, he was ready.

Bucky hooked his legs around the lanky man's knee. Crossing his ankles, he rolled sharply away from the desk. Mr. Sneer lurched and struggled to keep his balance without a broken knee. Gravity, given an assist by Bucky flexing his legs, helped him to the conclusion. A nasty landing brought a muffled grunt in response.

Every action has its equal and opposite reaction. Leaving the treacherous, slippery bastard in traction held a certain attractive allure. Bucky pounced him and slammed the hacker down by the shoulders.

"You're doomed, old man. Your time is over. You put me down and others rise," Mr. Sneer said.

"I heard that before." Bucky stared into the harsh bruises rising on the hacker's cheek, the ugly mottling livid pink under the sparse facial hair. Ages ago he leaned over a similar man spitting similar words. Replace the grungy t-shirt replaced by a brown jacket belted around the waist, and the same manic light burned in those eyes.

"Yeah, and you lost. We're still here." The lanky fellow struggled to tear Bucky's arm off his shoulder. Both hands clamped around his forearm. In a chorus of porcine grunts, he yanked and pulled, exposing a sliver of glimmering silver. Confusion rolled over the hacker's face. He shot a look up at Bucky and back to the concealed lamellar of the prosthetic arm.

"Yeah? I never left either." The soldier's cold blue eyes enshrined the heart of a winter storm behind the navy mask framing them. The full mouth that so bewitched Tony Stark held no capacity to smile. He gave that thousand yard bullseye stare.

Not long after they first got together, Tony woke to Bucky giving a fixed look at the penthouse window. Poor bastard thought nothing of slipping around to interposed himself. He said he saw an emptiness in Bucky's eyes, a glimpse on the dormant other beaten into him by the Soviets. The man who killed Howard and Maria Stark sat in their son's bedroom contemplating the vastness of New York.

"I thought I was going to die then and there," Tony said, later.

Bucky had found the entire notion befuddling. "I wasn't thinking about killing you."

"You weren't. Emphasis on you. someone else was staring out your eyes. I'll be happy if I never see that again." Tony's words and persistent shaking hands sent Bucky to schedule an appointment with one of those specialty therapists skilled in handling PTSD recommended to him by Sam Wilson.

Bucky wasn't the same man after leaving HYDRA. He earned his freedom time and time again. After grueling effort, he rebuilt scraps of his reputation. And that punk wanted to take it all away.

He didn't remember grabbing the shield or flipping it over. Mr. Sneer didn't sneer so well with a broken nose or his teeth saved in, the flat boss bashed into his face. It wasn't worthy of the shield, but it kept the hacker down. He'd live, if the fates were kind.

Minutes to go. Bucky hauled the unconscious hacker by the collar and dragged him out of the server room.

Unlucky for HYDRA, karma was kind of a bitch and moved a whole lot faster than fate.

* * *

He needed a diversion and definitely had one. The limp body of the unconscious hacker crashed down onto a metal bank of pipes with an unholy crash. Maybe adding the aluminum scrap under Mr. Sneer's shirt was overkill, but the deafening noise certainly made an impression.

Half a dozen men went for their guns, covering the catwalk where Bucky launched their erstwhile companion. Steve always went on about the importance of entrances and Tony -- Tony wouldn't be a Stark if he didn't cash in a nation's worth of pomp and circumstance to make a splash.

Frantic responses burst over the radios. "He's down here!"

The six men fanned out. Marks of a professional, demonstrating they were more than hapless cyber terrorists or warm bodies armed with guns. That might give Bucky an actual challenge. He couldn't afford to lay low. The hallways crawled with mercenaries, HYDRA mooks probably ordered to shoot to kill.

Six men, cut to the same cloth: broad shouldered, strong armed, military shaved hooligans transported from an era of bloody battles in platemail or hit squads chasing Panzer tanks. Either way, he knew their kind and how to deal with them. They broke as easily as any other. He snapped enough in creating Soviet squads.

One of the men strode boldly into plain view, an especially clear demonstration of a trap relying on bravado or integrity. Lucky for him, Bucky lacked either in more than trace amounts.

They wouldn't want to believe they faced an assassin or a fighter as dirty as they were, and the traditional conventions of a hero no longer applied. Bucky slid from the velvety sanctuary of the shadows to make his point. His declaration began with a snap of bone, another brassy bit of fanfare when pieces of a crushed gun rained down onto the floor.

Five. Hunting them was almost too easy. They made little mistakes, equivalent to sloppy in his kind of work. His nearest mark halted too long, touching the microphone in his collar.

"Zero one six beta, repeat, zero one six beta. Target is not conf--" The poor bastard covered the ceiling but not his blind spot. He uttered a gasp into the mic that sent the others scurrying for cover, frightened fish in the presence of a shark.

Not wise to get that arrogant, assuming his superiority over the hired guns. One mistake might blow out his knee. Bucky flipped the mercenary over his shoulder and drove him to the floor. Short work using his belt and a stretchy cord to bind the mercenary in a way he couldn't escape from for a while.

HYDRA pins for HYDRA tentacles. He wasted his time chopping them one by one, but word went out. The paramilitary force converged on the hot spot for Captain America, solitary, undefended. Strength in numbers lay with his old enemy.

Unless Iron Man showed to support him, and that opportunity diminished by the minute. Tony misrepresented his mental state in the cabin, when he agreed to retreat. The armour wrapped around him and broke the promise. He dictated an open threat against his former lover, and Bucky silently acknowledged the inevitable truth as he stalked the hunters who sought him in turn.

Something dreadful happened to the man he knew. The nanotechnology disrupted him and override his conscience as easily as Bucky's command words controlled his actions. Things never changed.

He had few compunctions about going toe to toe with a wave of mercenaries, but he stayed mobile, roving from corner to corner. His path strayed in sight and vanished again. Their bullets counted the seconds Friday needed to fend off the cyber attack compromising her integrity. He held little purpose in everyday jobs, but in combat, he entered his element.

Fighting cleansed the spirit and roused his senses to the pinnacle of clarity. He moved like a wolf and struck like a demon, sinuously turning and intercepting blows on the shield. His fists delivered judgment, his feet evened the playing field. Once upon a time, Iron Man's blasts followed the stunning hits and laid their enemies out.

God, he missed those days. As a matter of truth, he longed for Tony at his side.

The third wave broke through a storage room and converged in a fanned line that foretold a greater problem. They took cover in a loose semi-circle, and one tossed a smoke grenade.

Bucky hit the deck, shield over him, and pulled in a deep breath. He pulled goggles on to shield his eyes, an old-fashioned trick still part of the Captain America playbook. His body vibrated with absorbed energy. The pungent, gagging smoke hardly deterred him from entering the fray.

His lover floating down in a plume of blue fire and swirling mist held him in check. They reached the end game a bit prematurely. Friday's window to operate within the network remained open as long as the AI overpowered and outmaneuvered her human opponents. Iron Man's suit fell firmly into her bailiwick.

Bucky only needed to buy her some time. Her, and Steve, somewhere on the other end of the country. Things truly took a dire turn if they needed Captain Rogers to take point on technological rescues. The ordeal ahead of him simmered with ruinous possibilities.

As he held his breath, time ticked on. By the time the violence abated, there might be nothing of him left.

"Time's up," Iron Man said. No spiel, no waste of time. The arm cannon opened, a brilliant bloom spinning up.

The blow knocked Bucky and several hundred pounds of metal, wood, and concrete through the server room wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	19. The Eleventh Hour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is running out of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback and comments welcome. :)

Pain served as an admirable drug to break through the mental haze when Bucky needed to act, and act right then. His body crashed to the ground. Nerve endings shrilled in the special blend of taut agony and burning anguish when he collided with the cement. The suit kept from tearing, and the critical tactical plates kept him from fracturing any bones. They did nothing for the ragged metallic spar slicing through his cheek in a sharp vertical line, leaving a fresh wash of blood on his jaw and chin.

He clenched his teeth and rolled out of the way, anticipating a pair of repulsor beams shot through the dusty hole. Two blasts slammed into the ground, leaving a charred crater and vaporized cement in each. Glad at a grim level to see he anticipated tactics correctly, he rolled onto his bruised hip and ran.

The size of the facility played to his advantage, in a sense. Its huge sprawl certainly worked against him at the outset when he needed to locate a secure room to upload Friday's new protocols. Finding a computer terminal of any kind amounted to a needle in a haystack. Not the first time he faced such difficulties. Bypassing the layers of mercenary protection, the hackers, and the physical security measures all took their time. They were a walk in the park compared to facing down Tony.

No, Iron Man. Iron Man corrupted somehow by HYDRA. That one he still hadn't figured out. He dimly remembered the experience that warped his will to their purposes, buried in the murkiest, old memories. His spotty files recovered after he went rogue, mostly supplied to the deep web out of Ukrainian sources, listed out a broken record of those earliest days. Experiments and medical records, for the most part. They never made very much sense to him. The shattered jumble of impressions and recollections from those days followed no linear pattern. No surprise considering the drugs and chemicals Zola pumped him full of, the compounds needed to bring him out of death's sepulchral halls.

He swept through the room, holding his aching arm close to him. The shield jarred his wrist and forearm in an unpleasant way, but the weight amounted to nothing negligible. If he had to rely on the prosthetic, so be it. Not the first time it provided the mainstay of his combat prowess and kept him alive against foes superior in so many ways. Dropping down to one knee, he hid behind a row of ruined servers and identified a shadowy figure close to the smaller doorway out of the room. Getting out of the mess he was in, he needed to act promptly.

The poor bastard didn't know what hit him, practically headfirst. Dashing low and fast as he dared, Bucky plunged through the doorway. He turned sideways and hauled the security guard with him. A hand clamped over the guard's mouth to forestall any shout of alarm. The mook didn't stand a chance though he tried to kick and lash out with fairly coordinated strikes. Too late to stop the vibranium and steel bicep pressing on his windpipe from suffocating him, sending him under.

Seven seconds, too long to spare with Iron Man ghosting after Bucky. Hunting him. That was new, and perplexing. Tony never quite counted as a hunter, preferring a much more direct style of fighting. Bucky processed the situation on the fly, adjusting his tactics. Fortunately, the armoured suit couldn't go fully invisible. The hum of a hundred fans around him drowned any sound of the repulsors. He needed cover, and he dashed through a narrow hallway to the second door, one not locked.

Another blast rippled behind him and cut the lights entirely. Darkness dropped over the corridor. Backup lights winked into being as the disruption activated secondary power sources. Well-illuminated paths were one less thing to worry about. A quiet, still corner of his psyche revelled in the change in the environment. He thrived in the dark.

Iron Man made a tactical error.

The second such error. The first was calling him Cap.

Iron Man didn't do that. Bucky hated to think what he lost during his own internment as the weapon of last resort for the USSR. But he knew the limits in his psyche, the holes in his scrambled personality. Everything remained intact, if out of order, near as he could tell. All his experience petered out in the past few years. He no more knew if one of these new methods employed by HYDRA in a crash course crossed Tony's synapses than if something darker and sinister was at play.

Didn't matter. Something they could sort out later, assuming he _had_ a later. The mission required prolonging his survival a little further. Every second brought the hope Steve could pull off a miracle in New York.

Bait with the shield was Bucky's job description, after all. Make the sacrifices necessary to give an ally a chance to make a difference, get an edge. He crept through the darkness, following a mental map, praying that he wasn't boxed in by a dead end. Unlike Iron Man, blowing an entrance into the wall wasn't exactly a possibility.

When the revealed Soviet records crossed Tony's database, they meant something more than unpleasant encounters and the ozone stench in Bucky's nightmares. Something beyond the stomach-churning tightness that anticipated hurt from all directions, his body heaving uncontrollably against leather straps and metal bands. Where he spoke haltingly of the impressions and the pound of flesh torn out of him, Tony offered the factual description of torture.

No surprise there. With his own health limitations, Stark deciphered the medical gobbledygook after receiving translations out of German. Not like he lacked connections in the medical community. Bruce Banner offered important insights. That neurosurgeon. Bucky could supply all the sick details in monotone about how HYDRA technicians used him as their personal experiments. Quiet inquiries done for Tony's own ends transformed into a growing body of knowledge and the flat, unpleasant revelation that the Soviets, under Zola, abused the Winter Soldier.

The process took months. Years, even, to fully quell the little voice at the back of his head. They used their advanced technology and unholy psychology to render him into putty. Cruel hands rebuilt him into the Asset, a killing machine that performed the mission. As an operative, he never questioned the pain or hurt. They merely slowed him down, another factor to work around to achieve a goal.

He operated easily through the shadows. Discomfort ran up his bruised flesh arm. The serum took care of the smaller cuts and bruises. A few hours and the traces of the bloody gash in his jaw would evaporate from sight. Only the scars on his shoulder --

_No. Those were gone too._

Bucky shuddered. His fingers trailed along a line of cords mounted to the wall, finding his way up to the stairs leading to catwalks above the server racks. More than likely Iron Man would still fly. Staying high invited too much noise by moving around, too much vulnerability. He learned a very long time to eschew open spaces in favour of cover. Iron Man could pick him off at his leisure if Bucky ran over the rooftop of the huge data center.

At least the size of the place, the enormous scale, protected him from being chased down. He saw no one in his immediate vicinity. No one there to hear the door handle crumple under his fist, or the curse when he opened into a closed room without any obvious exits. Truth was, he didn't really know how Friday might alert him to overtaking the data center computer systems.

His plan had a significant flaw. He slowly worked his way back to the converted office, the cabin as he thought of it. Ridiculous to imagine the building as a cabin, but it was equally ridiculous to him that anyone would put a workshop in the middle of a facility the size of a small city. If Iron Man thought he was Captain America -- or _Steve_ \-- he would want a head-on fight. Bucky crept up on another HYDRA mercenary and twisted his neck before his partner could respond, pulling out a silenced gun from the collapsing merc's hands to shoot the other.

The man dropped. Bucky dashed on, hearing the crackle of a voice over the radio from the floor.

"There's no use running, Cap. This is the end."

Iron Man sounded like he was five feet away. Bucky whirled, shield up, seeing nothing but a stream of blinking blue lights behind crossed metal bars and the dull blink of a red light. Security camera, if he had to guess. A sharp throw of the shield smashed the box and its lens to spitting sparks, and he snatched the disk on the rebound, running at full tilt.

_Dammit, Tony. This isn't you. Fight it, this isn't you._

How had someone like Tony Stark, a man as willful and arrogant as he was brilliant, fallen to them? HYDRA changed with the times, of that he had no doubt. The idea of techniques or technology able to fast-track scrambling a target sent a sick chill down his back. Days apart, and Tony forgot him.

No. It couldn't be that simple.

Moving through the facility shouldn't be that simple.

Bucky cursed and turtled without hesitation. Defensive maneuvers were a matter of dropping to one knee and pulling the shield over his head for shelter. The lights barely flickered to a brightness outlining boxy shapes and tall, caged racks. The bright white beam of the cannon roared out of nowhere.

Steve never once mentioned how piss poor the shield acted against that eye-scorching rush of concentrated light. Hell, he never bothered to say how much force it took to withstand a full blast. Tony held back during practice, given that their bouts never ended up in blindness and burnt flesh. The incoming rush threw Bucky off his feet and sent him rolling in an uncontrolled retreat. His boots scraped on the ground as he planted himself, forestalling crashing into a supportive pillar.

The vibranium disk rose again, giving him protection against another blinding flash. Iron Man's follow up unleashed a solid, heavy blast against the paint, lifting the ring of scarlet and sapphire from the metal backing.

"You just don't give up," Iron Man shouted across the way, floating into the air. The scarlet hue of his armour faded in, bleeding from dark seams. In the shadows, the arc reactor blazed a pure, brilliant blue.

"No shit," Bucky hissed.

His arm ached. The shield deflected the cannon-beam, barely, but he saw the tiny waver of motion and run under cover, losing his balance and scrambling. Another burst of shots hit the ground where he previously stood. Clearly, Iron Man expected him to stay in one spot or advance, some heroic knight against daunting odds.

He had the wrong man for that.

Heroes earned the title by dying. Bucky had no intention of laying down his life, not with so many reasons to live. Feats of intense bravery hand in hand with stupidity weren't his style and never had been. Another reason he might not deserve the shield, but Steve Rogers insisted. Steve wasn't a man he ever intended to let down. Neither could he turn his back on Tony Stark, not after all the headway they made in life. All sins might be forgiven, starting with Russia. With separation.

How was he ever going to say sorry for failing the team and Tony if they never came together again? A lonely data center in Nevada wouldn't be his end.

So he ran.

Iron Man swore, flying across the distance to chase his former teammate through the warehouse. Changing tactics, he detonated a circle of blasts with both hands, ringing Bucky in against the server equipment. Two shots struck the computers, setting off a string of pops and acrid smoke within the metal cages. Another shot hit the pillar and the melted post collapsed, bringing down the ceiling tiles in a cascade.

The bruises did little to slow Bucky. He embraced the throbbing pain above his knee and swiveled, narrowly avoiding another blistering hot beam launched at nearly point-blank range. Too close this time. His reflection danced over the bloody finish of that shining armour. Thin eye slits turned incandescent.

Where else was there to go with his back to the wall and out of options?

Bucky launched himself as hard and fast behind the shield, ramming into Iron Man. He relied on speed and strength, hoping to catch his retreating teammate until he was fully out of reach. A miscalculation on his part allowed Iron Man to burst for the ceiling, knocked back.

But not to escape the metal hand wrapped around his boot.

It never was much of a fair fight when Bucky and Tony sparred. The serum, even the bastardized take on Erskine's perfected formula, gave Bucky a physique to die for. Some of the feats he and Steve pulled off simply couldn't happen. Science held no explanation for how their bones never warped and their muscles never tore. Cap holding a fully operational helicopter to a landing pad floated in Bucky's memory.

He had nothing to hold onto but a pillar in ruins or the server racks. The helicopter sure as hell didn't have jets capable of reaching supersonic speeds. Training taught you to calculate, yes, and to stop thinking about the outcomes quite so much.

Otherwise, Bucky might have flinched. Instead, he ripped Iron Man around in a circle as hard as he could, trying to ground him, even as his feet slid and skipped above the ground. His plan worked for about four seconds, until Iron Man's repulsors redoubled their efforts and lifted them together, throwing odd shadows in blue and white around the room, blinding the super soldier for a moment.

Long enough to see the arc about to be fired at his heart.

Iron Man ripped at his suit, sending the shield bouncing away. The next blow casually cuffed the nanite-based glove across Bucky's face, knocking his head back hard. Stars exploded over his sight. His neck might not be broken. It felt that way. Lightning filled his skull with white noise and obliterated conscious thought.

Nanites.

 _The nanites_.

It all made sense to Bucky -- and too late to tell anyone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	20. Who Will Save You Now?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky fights for his life to save his future and free Tony from HYDRA's technology influence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go -- and things may be looking grim, but there's a happy ending.

After a certain point, Bucky failed to feel pain. The source of the pain still went on unabated, but his body divorced itself from his mind. He floated above the numbness in a swaddling of distance. He still detected the tugging on his limbs, the tense joints giving way at some level. Or the fabric. Telling the difference between skin and muscle or reinforced cloth woven strong enough to withstand the rigors of the job was next to impossible.

He registered the particular danger of his situation through waves of lassitude. Sleep might be easier. Just float away from the cares still filtered through the fuzzy haze around him. He felt tempted to let himself drift into the nebulous warmth, but one tiny shard of self-awareness kept shrilling a warning against the relaxation.

It wouldn't let go.

The same part of his brain registered the scalding heat on his shoulder and the cuff knocking his head back against the ground several times over. He never found out how many punches he could take before going down. The Soviets never allowed him to reach that blurry line of unconsciousness without applying a bucket of ice water, thin blades in cunning places, or a set of bare wires connected to a battery.

Never any escape from his handlers. The technicians accompanying that angel of death and pain taught him to worship Zola through screams and harrowed grunts when his voice gave out. He gave thanks by writhing and twisting in uncontrolled to escape. Like he did then on the floor of the Nevadan desert.

Memory of place and purposed snapped back into focus. The delusions of comfort fled away, dispelled by the burning light of reason. He had no escape from his own flesh.

Blood streamed freely from his split lip and coated the knitting gouge on his cheek. His right arm, the good one, lay under him at an angle leaving his entire side paralyzed in pain. The limb refused to respond to him except in twinges of his fingertips, and the digits responded sluggishly to his efforts to move them.

Iron Man sensed the return because he casually cuffed Bucky across the face again. The bemusement of his left arm, the dangerous one designed by Soviet masterminds, swiftly eluded Bucky's best attempts to hold onto rational thought.

His escape from torment lasted no more than few minutes. This time he hung weakly from the metal racks securing the server. Metal ripped out from the frames wrapped around him, mummifying him in sharp-edged bandages. Glowing embers floated across his blurred vision. His eyes didn't want to sharpen his vision enough to follow them back to a red-hot brand at first. It took him a few blinks to identify Iron Man welding another stout metal rod into place.

"Think I was going anywhere?" he asked, pleased to hear that his voice worked. His teeth seemed mostly in place.

Iron Man -- not Tony, Tony wasn't home inside the suit -- gave him a backhanded slap that cut the inside of his cheek open. Bucky tried to spit out the blood but his swollen mouth refused to comply with the effort. The fouled spittle ran over his chin and stained his teeth.

While he lolled, his feet lifted off the ground, Iron Man continued to work. The beam came close to the torn sleeve of his suit. Heat poured from the tortured metal along the cage containing him. He arched in a futile effort to get away, the structure heaving with his efforts.

"What is it you want?" he asked.

"You're a traitor," Iron Man said. The passive flatness of the answer wasn't like Tony at all. When enraged, his passions rattled through his voice. Restraint left a brittle vibration at the back of the billionaire's statements, like he fought himself for control to sound mild and reasonable when his arrogant brilliance left him anything but. "You make a mockery of everything I -- that this country stands for. Working outside the law, a renegade. We've got words for that, Cap. Vigilante. Criminal. Terrorist. I won't allow you to terrorize people any longer."

"Change of heart, eh?"

Iron Man stilled, his faceplate awash in clashing indigo lights from the bank of computers and the faint illumination leaking out through his eye holes. "You don't get to talk anymore."

He raised his closed fist. Bucky's eyes involuntarily widened and he inhaled through his nose.

This was the end. He had nowhere to run, no place to hide. His arms bunched against the metal, the prosthetic responding and the other side barely at all. Metal ribs bore down on his shoulders and biceps as they bulged with all the force he could muster. If his arm failed to rise and block the blow -- at the expense of the prosthetic's structural integrity -- he would die. Iron Man grabbed the mask as he twisted his head, snapping his body to the side, forcing the weakest of the welded seals to spring free.

Weakened leather tore away from Bucky's face. He turned his face to the pitiless, featureless mask. A scream boiled up from his chest, past his throat. Defiance and despair found a common sound. The prison of his bonds screeched too as he moved. The leather helm ripped away, his bloody face left exposed.

Iron Man hesitated. The killing blow hung suspended, his arm reared back, the navy helmet hanging slack and shapeless without a head to protect.

"What? You aren't…"

Eleven distinct _pings_ registered off the back of the metallic armour. Tight clusters struck shoulder, chest, the back of the helm. All kill shots, precisely directed at alarmingly close range. They deliberately avoided Bucky. He determined that immediately.

"Get out!" he screamed into the dark. "He's been compromised by the nanites. Run!"

But when had Natasha Romanova ever listened to him? Not since she graduated from the Red Room, barely even then. The woman had a mind of her own, a mind second to none. She mostly hid her limp as she emerged out of the shadows. Both pistols in her hands barked again. Another set of bullets ricocheted off Iron Man as he turned.

Her thousand yard stare showed none of her pain. It slowed her. Helpless in his prison, Bucky watched her shift to her good leg, ready to dive aside. Iron Man surprised her, blasting the ground and the ceiling at the same time. Open sky shone through the gaping hole left by his attack. Dust and debris flew up. She crossed her arms over her face and dove.

Going one on one with Iron Man left him trapped and killed. Natasha might escape -- a Black Widow's stealth on a mission was second to none. But she couldn't take him head on. Unless she was the diversion.

Iron Man refused to take the bait, swiveling back to his captive.

"Pretending to be Cap? That's not going to save you." He paused, anger rippling over him. His sensory systems must be tracking Natasha through the debris, and Bucky needed to pull his attention back to give her a fighting chance at escape.

The battered assassin smirked. His mouth hurt, fresh wetness dribbling down his chin from the split cuts. "Don't tell me you forgot our date."

"Who put you up to this?"

"Tony Stark," Bucky said.

Iron Man dropped the helm to the ground. His hand rose. "I'll deal with Rogers next."

Stone shifted. He didn't even turn, firing the repulsor beam. Natasha cried out in pain, stifled only part way. A nasty burn ripped into her black leather suit, exposing raw, angry skin beneath. She slid over the floor and planted her foot, forestalling further movement. Blood and liquid oozed over her sleeve, but didn't halt her from leveling her shaky wrist. She supported her elbow with her other hand.

Bucky snarled and spat at the mask. His prosthetic arm whirred as the inner servos gave their full force to lifting, breaking the metallic frame. Fans and wires whined in a shrill pitch higher than the groaning metal or the whirring hiss of the arc reactor. He drove his closed fist into Iron Man's stomach.

Gold tubes glittered at her wrist. Two lines shot out, thin and precise, striking the back of Iron Man's armour. Fifty thousand volts surged straight over the wires, blowing into the nanite core. Bucky tried to tear himself free with all the strength he had left, seizing the break in the fight.

He knew the tasers wouldn't do much. Tony reinforced his armour against every kind of danger, especially electricity and fire. Their line of work brought out the maniacs happy to put a flamethrower to good use against heroes, not to mention the Asgardian god they kept company with. Having some built-in resistance to lightning bolts was practically a job requirement. Black Widow's bracelets wouldn't put him down or stop Iron Man for long. Assuming HYDRA had not pursued augmentations during Tony's short-term captivity.

Tears ran down his face as he felt the metal shredding his uniform, covering him in bleeding scratches. His metal arm shook and responded at a fraction of its usual speed, but he managed to ram his palm into Iron Man's face, bypassing the shaking, rattling arms. He seized the faceplate and tore that away while taking a fist to the gut, one that lifted him square off the ground.

Bloodshot eyes met his. Tony's familiar face contorted into a grimace, a snarl under the sheen of sweat and pain. _No, not Tony._ Tony wouldn't attack him like that.

Iron Man lashed out again, blood on his gloves, the electricity conducted through the structure of the nanites.  Speakers conveyed murmurs audible to them both, no longer contained by the helmet.

"Take him down. Captain America has fallen under HYDRA influence," whispered the seductive, lilting voice of the AI.

No. The suit.

"Who? You… Why are you…"

Iron Man seized the torn sleeve and whirled Bucky around. Their swift movement almost crushed Natasha's ankle and she dodged aside, the wreckage of the ceiling caving in. Bits of tile snapped the wires off the suit as the debris plummeted to the floor.

Tony's darting eyes hardened again. "Cover me!" he ordered the suit.

In a wave, the nanites rolled over the holes in his mask, filling in the faceplate under a web of golden chromed lines. The matrix erased the familiar lines of Tony's face, wiping out his distress and confused expression. Incomplete sections gave Bucky a chance, and he tried to grab again for the gaps, preventing the nanites from sealing shut.

They were floating, skipping off the ground. Thrusters punched them up to the ceiling and spun them around again. Bucky's right arm barely had enough strength to hold onto the smooth metal. He hooked his leg around Iron Man's thigh to throw him off balance and knock him to ground level again. The jarring path hurt as he fought to tear out the plate, to keep eye contact.

"Look at me," he shouted. "Look at me! Tony, you're in there, fight it!"

But Tony wasn't. Not in any way he could reach. Just a vet with a broken arm and no magic powers, none of Steve's candor. He led his lover to damnation, abandoned him there. He lost against HYDRA. The technicians, long dead, laughed in their graves. Ghosts of his past piled up to watch one last attempt for Bucky Barnes, the broken scraps of the man who escaped their prison, to beat his enemy. His enemy who was his teammate and his lover.

The pieces of his breaking heart were a small pain compared to the electric shocks running up the vibranium-steel alloy. Plates went haywire, lifting and falling. His shoulder seized as the deep implants pulled on fraying muscle fibres. He made one last grab for the forming nanite plate. Another would take its place, waiting to be ripped away, as long as he could meet Tony's eyes one more time.

Nanite strands stung where they hit the vibranium and steel, wrapping around the joints, infiltrating the seams between the digits. Thin threads on a microscopic level piled up like drops of candle wax. His fingers failed to respond at all, jerking, spreading open frozen. Dammit, now wasn't the time. More than ever he relied on the damn metal arm to get him through, a reliance he hated to admit. Bucky hissed. He clenched his fist and yanked it back, seeing the last open patch seal shut in a shorter time than he thought possible.

Gone in a heartbeat. Just like the Russian Far East. One blink, Tony had his back. The next, smoke and pain, and a blink of darkness swept around him.

Gravity met him as he crashed to the ground. Iron Man swiveled too fast, freeing himself of Bucky's entangling legs. He rotated full around, thrusters compensating for his shaken balance. Both hands came out, repulsor diodes so bright a white they seared all vision from Bucky's eyes. .

Bucky needed interference on a major scale, and cried out in Russian. "Пятница!"

_Pyanitsa!_

Friday.

From the ground, Natasha pulled herself up on one hand and spat, "Friday," in just as soft a tone.

A terse, angry snarl escaped the mask and Iron Man fired.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	21. Redemption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will Bucky's sacrifice overcome the mistakes of the past?

Tears streamed down his face beneath the cowl, mixing with the blood and dust. Wet streaks mixed iron and salt upon broken lips. The taste of failure and betrayal sank into the deep cuts, producing a fierce burn on raw nerve endings.

So this was death.

No glimpse of a white light at the end of the tunnel as he experienced once, crashing into the icy depths of the water that broke his body into splinters and stole the breath from his lungs and the scream from his voice. Icy darkness laid over his vision in a sepulchral veil then as dying senses flared in an all-out assault to survive despite the odds stacked against him. He burned, not drowned.

This wasn't 1943. He left behind someone other than Steve at the climax of a perilous journey. He named two failures this time -- Tony, his lover and Natasha, his protégé. History repeated itself and made a cynic out of a man foolish enough to hope he broke the cycle and found a new path in the fresh start on life he received.

Bucky didn't want to die back in 1943 any more than he wanted to now. No psychologist at SHIELD ever dug so deep to ask him about those final moments in the frigid waters as he struggled to the surface. His broken body seized uncontrollably while he gasped at the fresh air. He remembered snippets of the fight. Better they thought he went peacefully upon impact, instantly killed.

So this was death, again. He died so many times he lost count.

No taste of nitrogen and unsurpassed cold, the iron-tang of winter, stole over his palate and sank its talons deep into his scarred chest, as he experienced countless times. His limbs twitched and the distant extremities relayed a smoldering ache spreading through his joints, entirely different from the stillness that accompanied the activation of the cryo chamber. Then ice crystals spread across his skin and grew in a hoarfrost fur over his bleached skin as he beat his metal fist against the impenetrable wall of the tube. He blazed, not froze.

This wasn't Russia. Similar, in some ways, more than his death in Europe. He went into that good night fighting with everything left in him, the serum combatting every wound and hurt with his depleted reserves. Shadowy figures moved around at the periphery of his icebound tomb until he shut down, held in suspended animation, uncaring and unneeded, stored until his nation needed him again.

Bucky didn't want to lose himself in Soviet Russia any more than he wanted to forget now. The precious shards of his identity and his memories faded last, long after his body reacted to the flash freeze, and he clutched at every bright fragment rather than letting go. Even now he summoned their images one after the other -- Steve in that ridiculous winged helm, when they were young and idealistic; Natasha, fierce and proud, disassembling their enemies almost singlehandedly; Sam, his prickly wingman, chowing down on Chinese in a facsimile of real life; Tony.

Always Tony.

His touchstone in the periods of nightmare came back to the same moment, with Tony relaxing on a couch, arc reactor glowing in his chest, smiling and for once not trying to recreate the universe in his own image. He never really stood still and at peace for him meant a whole other thing than for most people. That was one of the qualities Bucky loved about him most. Tony got him and understood that restless dynamic energy seething in his veins, the impulsive need to _act_ rather than sit still patiently. A bond they all shared, Tony and Steve and him.

He didn't want to go and leave those keystones of a life behind. Wasn't sacrificing his life and his body for the United States enough? Had he not taken on a lion's share as the dreaded Winter Soldier to last ten lifetimes, countless lifetimes? He was sick of being the scapegoat of fate, handed a morsel of hope that destiny snatched back from his hands when he let his guard down. Life was brutal, ugly, and short, and he yearned to clutch hold of it for all he was worth.

Too late, of course, to turn back time. His release from HYDRA had been a sacrifice play on the Avengers' part, though they wouldn't realize that until later. He received another shot and blew it. Or worse, he fulfilled the role those shadowy masterminds in the organization intended all along. They put him into a position to net a much bigger fish, the kind of prize that only came along once in a generation. If they couldn't have the father, why not the son?

He fell right into the trap, luring out Tony, a perfect little honey pot for Iron Man. Sure, the wiles of Natasha and all her Widow sisters piqued Tony's interests, but give him the impossible, and he never let go. They dangled Bucky in front of Tony with the promise his lover still lived. From there, it probably never mattered how Bucky ran. He led HYDRA straight to Iron Man, and Iron Man came running with his arms open and guns blazing.

The beautiful simplicity of the plan laid out in those quiet moments between losing the battle and his final end hurt more than anything else.

They used him to hurt the person he cared about. Steve, he might have seen the pattern sooner and put a stop to it. Or Natasha, had she realized the full depth of trouble, rather than focusing on infiltrating the data centre.

Bucky failed. Nothing took away the tasteless haze of despair. He slumped deeper, his entire body collapsing against the shadows.

"Tony, I'm sorry. I tried."

Tried wasn't good enough, certainly not in his books. He failed the mission at the cost of three members, himself included. History wasn't a kind judge on men who tried and women who felt short of the mark.

No telling the outcome of Barton or Wilson. Replacing the Quinjet might be a headache, a matter of small potatoes compared to the lives pinched out across the Nevadan desert. He dearly hoped Clint and Sam made it out alive, under cover of the explosions. No one around the data centre remained safe as long as HYDRA -- as long Tony, corrupted by HYDRA -- stalked the grounds. Come hell or high water, they needed to flee back to New York. Back to Steve, who offered shelter and leadership to get through the next set of trials.

Bucky shut his eyes. What was the point of the thought exercise? His brain played sadistic games in his last moments as the last oxygen in his blood depleted. Contemplating the doomed outcome of his friends was a hell of a way to go. Maybe better not to fight anymore, and let go of the edge.

He couldn't.

He wanted to live, he wanted to breathe so badly. He wanted to feel the rain on his face and the sun burning his shoulder where the metal met scar tissue. No one bargained with death and came out on the other side intact. Save Steve, somewhere, one of Nick Fury's miracles behind a game of cloak and daggers. No one waited on the other side of the curtain to whisk him to a long recuperation.

Tears slipped over his skin like acid. He faltered to the thread of consciousness and the world crumbled away underneath his body. His legs slid uselessly down the slope into the void, and the rest of him followed in a helpless tumble, skewed at odd angles. He opened his mouth to scream and not a sound came out.

* * *

"Get out of my way," Natasha snapped, hauling herself up weakly onto a broken chunk of metal. "Barton, rip open his shirt."

Clint scowled at the redhead as he knelt. He pulled a combat knife from his boot, clearing the sheath. "You don't think I know my way around basic field medicine?"

"This isn't basic," she said.

His expression softened a few notches, showing the haggard lines. The archer wasn't a young man anymore. Rescues on a bloody battlefield were something of a young man's game. "Maybe you should let me do this, considering you took a hell of a hit."

"No." She threw his compassion back in his face by hauling herself up beside the limp body on the ground. Cutting into his clothes was difficult even with the knife, though Clint set himself to sawing through the layers. "You know what to do?"

Clint nodded, sharp jerks on the razor-sharp blade ripping open a ragged line of bare skin. He hissed through his teeth.

Two torn lines ejected from her bracelet spat out on the chest. Crackling sparks erupted from the loose edges as they danced, a pair of serpents seeking something to sink their fangs into. She extended her arm with difficulty, hissing through her dislocated shoulder.

"You could have warned me." After he jerked back onto his bad leg, the archer sent the knife skittering across the concrete floor. He watched her paw at the wires to push them down, and sighed. "God help me, this is going to hurt. Was it not enough being stabbed, shot down, and chased?"

Hard to argue as he leaned over and pinched the wires in his gloves. The shock rippled up his spine and dislodged a gurgling choked noise from his throat. Wonderful. Her narrowed eyes and grey face told him all he needed to know. Bracing himself, he pressed the two exposed ends to the fallen man's chest. Lightning crackled from the depleted cells in Natasha's bracelet.

Bucky jerked off the ground in an uncoordinated spasm that sent his ragdoll limbs bouncing off the floor. Shock erupted into motion and then stillness again. His head lolled to the side, gaze vacant under a sanguine mask. Natasha winced, unable to steady his face. The rattling sizzle crackled over broken Bucky's skin, red welts forking out from the point of impact.

Clint held on as long as he could, shuddering from the force, until his shaking arm disengaged and he fell back to the ground. Gasps escaped through his chattering teeth in a disparate melody.

"Stop. Stop. You can't do this to him." The masculine voice moaning over them barely broke above a shout.

Propped limply against a server rack, Tony tried to reach out his hand. His arm lifted a few inches and then collapsed back into his lap. Bandages wound up his torn sleeve where Sam wrapped them messily using stock from the first aid kit he pilfered from the Quinjet.

Not like they had many options. Clint rolled back onto his knees and slowly forced his limbs back into order, crawling the ten miles back to Bucky. Fine, he needed to go about two meters, but the comparison felt apt. Ten miles uphill through a desert at high noon. While being assaulted by wolves. He desperately wanted a shot of whiskey or morphine, maybe both, as he reached Bucky again.

His thumb hooked under his captain's jaw. The pulse fluttered around weakly, something he could work with. He met Natasha's troubled gaze and jerked his chin, enough to count as a nod. She finally slid flat against the stone, allowing pain to overcome her vigilance for a few moments. Hell, after what she went through, he figured she earned herself a couple days of rest and relaxation. Not that she would ever take them, no matter what Steve offered.

Clint placed his hands on Bucky's chest.

"No!" Tony shuffled on his knees, and managed somehow to break out of Sam's reach, forcing himself to move inch by agonizing inch. He was the eldest of them all, most certain to feel the aftereffects of the battle. "Stop. You're going to kill him."

"I _don't_ do this, I won't stabilize him," Clint snapped.

"Let me help. The nanites can mend that."

"Do I have to remind you those things screwed with you somehow? I don't think so." Clint started compressions, bearing his full weight down on his hands. His knee screamed in pain and his hip felt like someone beat him with an oversized can opener, but he needed to get started and help Bucky's faltering heartbeat establish a ready rhythm.

Natasha shook her head weakly, her sweat-plastered curls spilled over her face. A horrible sight they all made, their captain down and their medic halfway to hell himself, Tony refusing aid and Nat on the edge of death. They needed more than shawarma after this one. Maybe Steve could swing a holiday in Bali or four hour massages. Pizza Friday all week. Clint let himself dream as he hummed to himself.

Out of the corner of his eye he spotted movement, but turned into Tony too late. Tony bodily hurled himself at the archer to knock them both off Bucky's body, landing in a tangled heap.

"What the hell, man!" Sam shouted. "He's trying to help!"

Rising off the ground first, Clint strongly considered jamming an arrow back into Tony. "Give me one good reason--"

"I love him," Tony said through tears and soot running down his battered face.

They all knew that, nothing new. Watching Bucky and Tony together rotted his teeth and drove him back to the bottle or Netflix. Clint's teeth gritted as he pressed down on Bucky's chest again, taking up the fast tempo in his head. Sam's arrival at a staggering gait at least prevented further interruptions.

"Barton? Is that _Stayin' Alive_?"

Fine, he was muttering aloud. Might as well own it. Clint forced his lips into a wolfish curl. "And if I can't get either, I really try. Got the wings of heaven on my shoes. I'm a dancin' man and I just can't lose."

Sam groaned in spite of himself. He murmured something to Tony about CPR and beats per minute that made him at least reasonably cool in Clint's book. Sweat dripped off his brow and Bucky remained unresponsive, but fuck if he was going to lose the fallen captain. Not on his watch. They lost enough that day.

"Friday has them under control," Tony argued behind him. "One shot, that's enough to mend the damage."

"And if you're wrong, we're all dead."

They hadn't ever heard Tony scream in frustration or hurl something away from them, not like a man wounded to the very core of his existence. He launched something heavy and metallic away from him to crash into another metal cage. "Then he's dead anyway!"

"It's Cap's call," Natasha said. Her hand pressed to her side in a welter of fluids, ruined leather, and what Clint tried not to think about as gore. Too late. Soon as he thought of gore, his eyes flicked to the damage and his stomach revolted in the worst possible way.

_Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive, stayin' alive._ Keep the beat, he needed to keep the beat even though he was fairly sure he cracked one of Bucky's ribs under him.

"Rogers. Cap's down," Tony said.

He wasn't wrong, Clint had to hand that to the man.

Tears streamed down Tony's face and he slumped several inches, losing whatever last wind sustained him in the face of grief. Sam took care of the water works and the feelings component that Clint spared little mind for. He wanted to give Bucky's face a slap and tell him to stop fuckiing with them all. But this wasn't a prank.

"So? What's our fearless Steve Rogers tell us?"

Nat relayed the question and paused for a good fifteen beats, and then nodded to Tony. That much exhausted her, and she sank back to stillness, applying steady pressure to the wound. While Friday took care of the various hacking attacks, they still stood terrifyingly vulnerable to the HYDRA-owned mercenaries. Why hadn't they broke the doors down? Clint faltered.

Tony pressed his wrist to the open gash in Bucky's navy armour, where the mutilated star split apart. It looked to Clint like he poured golden water over the burn marks, and he winced at the brightness. "Wouldn't this make sense to apply to an incision? Or, like, his mouth?"

"Barton," Sam's warning tone rang myriad alarm bells.

Nanites vanished over the surface of Bucky's pale skin. Tony muttered a command into the thin gauntlet around his wrist. "Heal."

Like that worked. Clint knew gods like Thor -- actual, honest to goodness, worshipped by non-crazy people alien entities that appeared to possess powers over forces he couldn't imagine. But Tony? Tony was human as the rest of them. Science and magic might be indistinguishable, but he had a hard time believing a command prompt to a Fitbit band was going to overcome shock and the sonic blast that knocked Bucky flat at the last moment.

The archer stopped the chest compressions and sat back, just as Bucky began to spit out blood and wheezing breaths.

"Well I'll be damned."

* * *

When it came to bedside manners, Steve Rogers took the cake. He patiently slipped into the recovery room sometime after dawn and remained well past the point even cleaning staff considered a break. A sketchbook and pencils accompanied him in his vigil, other than a bottle of water and the occasional shift change for a meal. Various machines showed more activity monitoring Bucky's vital signs and pumping medication into his veins than Steve.

Lucidity came and went. Doses of carefully administered medicines kept him under to sleep and recuperate lost resources. Bucky was vaguely aware of an argument taking place outside between Steve and another person, by the sounds of it Sam, telling him to get a sandwich and a good nap. Not like anyone inside was going anywhere. He slipped back into sleep, trusting that Steve's presence marked an end to the emergencies. Otherwise why would he stay with Bucky?

Seventy-nine hours later, Tony slipped into the room, hands deep in his pockets, a look of contrite uncertainty shattering his usual larger-than-life confidence. Ego like that could be seen from space, and it was odd -- conspicuously so -- to see him shuffling around like a boy remonstrated by his father. Or not, knowing Tony's father.

Bucky blinked himself further awake.

Howard Stark was another matter for another time that Bucky long meant to address. He and Steve held entirely different views of the technology tycoon than his lone son. They knew a man dazzled by progress and innovation, not crushing his lone son under demanding standards and impossible ambitions.

He blinked into the sunlight. The corner of his mouth went up. "Hey."

"Hey." Tony nodded at the door. His elbow pointed at the empty hallway. "Rogers is taking a break. He'll be back any time."

Not likely. Steve knew when to make himself scarce for the good of all. Bucky pushed himself up in the bed, seated upright. The plain blue t-shirt clung to his chest. He glanced at the tubes and the IV running into his good arm, but thought the better of pulling them out. "I've been out too long."

"No one said you had to be up."

"I'm done recuperating." Bucky rubbed the gritty sand out of his eyes. Tony hung back from him, almost hiding in the corner of the room, the furthest he could be in close quarters. That hurt. "I'm not going to bite. I know it wasn't you. The suit. HYDRA took it over."

Tony stared at his two thousand dollar loafers. "And I nearly killed you."

"Nearly isn't dead. You were with me in the office." Tony had to be. Bucky raked himself over the coals for seducing his lover out of his right mind every waking hour. "Yeah. But after that, everything gets fuzzy. I wanted you dead and…" Tony's voice broke. He glared at an offensive blind slightly more crooked than the rest. He wouldn't meet Bucky's eyes. "After that? Maybe it's better if… If we…"

Screw the IV, screw the bed, and the stupid white socks someone pulled over his feet to keep them warm. Bucky surged up to his feet and crossed the room without quite being sure how he managed. Dangling tubes attached to shrilling machines told on him, scolding him back to bed. He penned Tony in the corner without realizing it at first, then grimaced, dropping to his knees.

Whatever he expected, Tony wasn't prepared for his lover crouched at his feet. Shock stole the colour from his already pale face. The arc reactor pulsed. "What are you doing?"

"This is me forgiving you."

"Get up."

"As you forgave me everything I did for HYDRA. For years. Will you forgive me?"

"Get up." Tony shut his eyes, not before Bucky saw tears again.

If the words that followed told him to leave, better that he lost his life on the concrete floor. They stood at a crossroads of a kind, the sort where lives changed. Someone could go forward, but never back. Bucky swallowed. "Will you forgive me, Anthony Stark?"

That rough nod gave a lifeline to get his way out of the labyrinth with. Something to start with, rather than forcing them to start all over again. He breathed again. "Everything that happened, we deal with. We are stronger than that. Than HYDRA."

Tony was silent, but his hands slid out of their pockets. Bucky took them gently, almost reverently, clasping them together. A kiss slipped over scarred knuckles. Tony hadn't used the nanites to heal his own cuts and bruises. He wore them in a lurid pattern of alternating yellows and dingy purples, green-limned blotches that deserved a gentler brush of Bucky's lips.

"What happened with HYDRA?"

Safer territory for a discussion, for all that Bucky rested his cheek against Tony's hands, greedy for the touch. His lover cleared his throat, finding his voice. "Friday cleared out the security and locked down most of the goons. Place like that had a lot of physical limits. Police got on site pretty fast."

"How many they take in?"

"Thirty?" Tony shook his head. "I wasn't paying attention. The reports for the Director contain all the numbers if you want to read them."

Bucky had no intention of reading anything for the next week, and nothing official for months. He doubted he had a job waiting for him after the disaster in Nevada. Things to worry about later, after addressing matters higher up on the priority list. "Casualties?" "We all made it out. Couple mercenaries and HYDRA technicians."

"Truth and Reconciliation is done then?"

"I still have loose ends to clean up. The photographs of Stark Industries technology weren't fakes, if that's what you wondered. With the Avengers after them, I doubt they will last the month." Tony dared to extend a finger, brushing it through Bucky's loose hair.

The opportunity was a landmine in plain sight. Step on it, self-delusions and deception didn't stand a chance. Bucky swallowed. "Steve leading that?"

"We've been waiting for you." Again the inventor refused to meet his eyes, looking off at the baseboard with particular fascination for the hygienic standards of the cleaning crew. "You can choose your future. I mean, no one wants to pressure you into a decision. _I_ don't want to. You were gone two years. It's been a change."

"I'm in."

"What?"

Bucky laughed, the sound odd and alien, weirdly hollow in his chest. Must be a side effect of the soundproofing in the room. "You thought I'd say no? What am I going to do, go back to art school?"

Tony winced at the sound, nursing a hell of a hangover emotionally by the looks of it. His face remained drawn, eyes bruised and sunken. How much had he slept? Not very fucking much, by Bucky's disapproving inner monologue. "Stark Industries can pay for near any school you want, if that's your goal."

"No." Getting his feet under him, he rose until he stood eye to eye with Tony. More than eye to eye, when he adopted that ramrod straight posture of Steve's. "I won't hear of it. As long as there's a seat for me on the team, I'll take it."

"The Quinjet isn't in any condition to take passengers," Tony idly said, "but aside from that." His eyes shut, the shudder running through him. Whatever composure held him together deserted him. Slumping back against the wall, he pulled his hands away to cover his face. Bucky's touch went with him. "How do we do this? Nothing is clear anymore."

"Hear Sam's a decent therapist or knows half a dozen."

Those haunted eyes shot a look through him, like Bucky was made of glass and barely there. "How can you take this so lightly, Buck? For fuck's sake, I could have left you dead."

Bucky crossed his arms over his chest. "Do you love me?"

"Yes. Of course. But the--"

A swipe of the gleaming metal hand cut him off. "Then that's all I need. Everything else we work out in time. When _weren't_ we a work in progress, Stark? Come on. I know how screwed up I am and sometimes how impossible it is to hold myself together. I can cut you some slack. Can you do that for yourself?"

"I love you. And cause I love you, I just can't let it go."

"Then I'm going to have to melt it out of you until you forget." Bucky leaned forward, bringing his mouth down hard onto Tony's bruised lips. The shock ran through the inventor, leaving him stiff and awkward as a teenager. Soft, coaxing kisses drew him out, melting away his resistance, a moan shared between them.

Whatever strength remained in Tony's legs gave out. He slid down the wall in slow motion, the dusky shadow of the assassin going with him. Bucky pressed the advantage, refusing to surrender that kiss, that gossamer connection that bound them together.

Steve found them together on the ground, holding hands, exchanging a steady look and nothing else. He halted in the doorway. "You need some privacy?"

Tony blushed a furious red, and started to turn his face away. Bucky rubbed his nose against that proud aquiline slope, and urged Tony to look back. "Uh…" Stark for once was on the back foot.

"I think we're ready to check out and suit up," Bucky said. "There's a mission waiting for us, and some unfinished business we better settle."

Raising an eyebrow, the blond allowed a slow smile to break through. He stepped aside to give them room. "As you say, Cap. Avengers Assemble."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made it to the end! I owe many thanks to WrenMassiveSpace for her gorgeous artwork and invaluable feedback along the way; the amazing CapRBB team for keeping us all on track for a major undertaking; and so many gifted artists and writers who inspired me. This is my first Big Bang of any sort. 
> 
> The epilogue for Tony and Bucky will be posted separately due to time considerations.

**Author's Note:**

> 


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